Auchan's Chicago adventures began with a Cub Foods in Joliet (an address I'm not able to find out) and a full Auchan store in Bridgeview, Illinois. However, the store was never a "true" hypermarket, opening in May 1989 with a 130,000 square foot space that contained groceries, and smaller departments including toys, hardware, and electronics.

Instead of featuring an interior "mini-mall" like the Houston store did, the store was located in a strip center (Bridgeview Court) at Harlem Avenue and 79th Street, with its own discount store in the complex, a Venture discount department store.

In November 1990, an outdoor area was enclosed and was used for additional seasonal goods rather than apparel as originally planned, described in the article below.

Auchan scraps apparel plans; adds seasonals; Windy City hypermarket adds 30,000 feet
Discount Store News
17 December 1990

Auchan Scraps Apparel Plans; Adds Seasonals

BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. - Auchan, the French-owned hypermarket chain, has indefinitely set aside earlier plans to expand into the apparel market at its Chicago area location.

Instead, it will use a 30,000-square-foot addition opened last month for hard lines seasonal goods, such as Christmas, garden and back-to-school, white sales and other special promotions.

With a net of 20,000 more square feet of selling space, the addition increases floor space by 25% to 100,000 square feet. The proportions of floor space devoted to food and general merchandise has tipped in favor of non-foods, 52,000 square feet, compared with 48,000 square feet for food. The space ratio was 60%-to-40% food to general merchandise.

The expansion basically encloses what once was an open-air, seasonal garden area to the right of the store. In addition, Auchan is adding a 2,000-square-foot storage area to the front of the store next to liquors for beverage storage.

With the two additions, the total store area will increase to 162,000 square feet from 130,000 square feet, but the Auchan unit in this Chicago suburb still remains far smaller than its first United States division in Houston, which is 230,000 square feet.

The Houston unit opened with apparel. But Auchan owns each store through a different subsidiary, and each is free to operate as it sees fit. David Skinner, manager of the Chicago area store, said that "customer demands" prompted the decision to indefinitely set aside plans for adding apparel.

"Nobody has ruled it out," Skinner said, "but plans have been postponed indefinitely.

"We probably will test some apparel," Skinner added.

In November, Auchan was testing three apparel items in sporting goods: Chicago Bears licensed jerseys, toddlers' sweatsuits and infants' sweatsuits, each at $9.99.

Emphasizing its move away from apparel, Auchan recently added two hard lines categories to its Chicago merchandise mix, luggage from American Tourister and bicycles from Huffy, Skinner said.

Skinner said Auchan is planning programs to increase seasonal offerings. But he declined to disclose either details of those plans or information about the kinds of promotions besides white sales he intends for his new space.

In Chicago, Auchan can do without the higher margins of apparel because "non-foods have proved to be pretty successful," Skinner said.

The added backroom space next to liquors will be used to store all types of beverages, soda, bottled water, beer, wine and liquor, according to Skinner.

"Liquor is a good category for us," a floor clerk said.

Skinner declined to disclose liquor margins, saying only that Auchan prices are competitive. For an Octoberfest promotion, the hypermarket was featuring a wide range of domestic and imported beers, including six-packs of Michelob and Lowenbrau at $2.79 and 24-can cases of Millers Genuine Draft and Stroh's Lite at $7.99.

According to Skinner, he was unaware of Auchan's intentions about opening any more units. Previously, Auchan has said that it would test its first units for about six years before opening others. Auchan opened its Houston unit in October 1988, and entered the Chicago market in April 1989.

In March 1991, the store was sold to Dominick's Finer Foods Inc., which soon rebranded it to Omni Superstore. By this point, news outlets were reporting the store only had 130k square feet when it was sold to Dominick's. It is not known if this was a mistake or if Auchan had closed off the expansions. This also came at the same time of selling the Cub Foods franchise back to Super Valu, exiting Chicago officially.

In 1997, the store was remodeled to the Dominick's format and closed two years later, with the building being demolished in February 2006.