Hard Discount, Hard Logistics: Tiendas 3B Expands Its Network in Querétaro

In the Kaizen Industrial Park, a white warehouse bearing the red Tiendas 3B logo marks the company’s latest expansion in Querétaro. The company added approximately 3,000 square meters of Class A industrial space in a park where it had already operated about 19,000 square meters since the previous year. The facility forms part of the network that supplies the central region and the Bajío, areas where the chain concentrates most of its routes and daily operations.

Nationally, Tiendas 3B manages approximately 200,000 square meters of industrial space, distributed across 16 distribution centers, in addition to four more expected to enter service in the second half of 2025, including those in Atlacomulco, State of Mexico, and Tehuacán, Puebla, which started operating in October, as well as one nearing completion in the WTC III Industrial Park in San Luis Potosí.

That same month, the company reopened its distribution center in Metepec, also in the State of Mexico, following an expansion and renovation process aimed at increasing distribution capacity in the metropolitan area of the Valley of Mexico.

Investment in expansions and upgrades was significant during the first half of the year. According to its latest financial report, Tiendas 3B allocated more than 1.4 billion pesos (roughly $82 million) to acquisitions and improvements to real estate and equipment, equivalent to approximately 4% of its half-year revenue. For a chain that operates with narrow margins—16% gross margin and 2% operating margin—that percentage is not only high¹ but also revealing: it confirms that logistical expansion does not follow commercial growth—it makes it possible.

The chain currently has more than 3,000 stores in the country, with particularly dense coverage in urban areas with middle- and low-income populations. Its “hard discount” model is sustained by two operational principles: high turnover volumes and strict cost containment. For those principles to function, logistical efficiency is not a support feature—it is the core of the business.

In the past year alone, the company added an average of 130 new stores per quarter. The result: an expansion of roughly 21% in its store base and the need to expand, synchronize, and reinforce the network of distribution centers that sustains that pace.

The expansion is not isolated. Querétaro has consolidated itself in recent years as one of the country’s most important logistics nodes due to its position between the Valley of Mexico, the Bajío, and the northern border corridors. For a chain whose model depends on frequent replenishment and low transportation costs, locating in the Airport submarket does more than speed distribution: it brings consumption centers closer to the infrastructure that supplies them. In this sense, the expansion in Kaizen is less a real estate bet than a strategic decision about speed and inventory control.

In hard discount, logistics is the margin. More on the industrial real estate market at SiiLA Market Analytics or at contacto@siila.com.mx.

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¹ Considering that Tiendas 3B earns roughly two pesos of operating profit for every hundred pesos sold, allocating about 4% of half-year revenue to logistics infrastructure means reinvesting more than the period’s operating profit. It is not a complementary gesture, but a structural one. The company itself acknowledges this in its IPO prospectus in New York, where it describes its model as one of low margin sustained by efficiency and scale: “The Tiendas 3B business model is highly efficient, allowing us to operate with gross margins that are lower than those of leading grocery retailers in Mexico.”