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Casino's Franprix to complete store renovation by end-2017

By Dominique Vidalon

PARIS (Reuters) - Franprix, the convenience store chain of retailer Casino (CASP.PA), said on Monday it aimed to upgrade all its 860 French stores to a new focus on fresh products and improved customer service by the end of 2017.

The renovation of the Franprix stores, located mostly in Paris and catering to urban customers, was launched in May 2015.

It is part of Casino's broader efforts to boost profits and cash flows in France, where it operates a total network of over 10,000 stores and makes 42 percent of group sales.

These efforts have also entailed cutting prices at the Geant hypermarkets and the Leader Price discount stores to compete with local rivals such as Carrefour (CARR.PA) and Leclerc.

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Franprix has already converted some 300 of its stores into what it calls "Mandarine" stores with bright orange colours, glazed facades and a focus on fresh products and new services as it seeks to respond to the threat of online retail giant Amazon (AMZN.O).

New services will include Western Union (WU.N) digital kiosks in Franprix stores enabling customers to send and receive money to and from 200 countries.

"We want be close to the customer. The true response to Amazon is the relation to the customer," said Jean-Paul Mochet, Franprix managing director.

Mochet was speaking during a visit of a renovated Franprix store in rue Saint-Dominique in Paris's posh 7th district.

The store is one of two in Paris where Franprix is testing a new payment system to reduce queuing times and free more store space by replacing traditional checkout counters with portable employee-held scanners.

The portable scanner is connected to the store Wi-Fi and worn like a ring around the staff fingers. Staff also carry a portable bank-card processor in their aprons. The goal is to have 100 stores offering the service in 2016.

The "Mandarine" concept has helped boost customer traffic in renovated stores by 8.9 percent in the fourth quarter, Casino said at its annual earnings in March.

In the fourth quarter of 2015, sales at Casino's French convenience stores, which also include Monoprix, rose 6.1 percent on a same-store basis, beating 1.4 percent sales growth for French operations as a whole.

Sales at Franprix alone rose 0.1 percent on a same-store basis.

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Tom Heneghan)