Ghost supermarket in Haeundae new apartment shopping district… What is the identity?

Input 2021.01.12 06:00

Several small supermarkets with colorful signboards such as’OO Super’ and’XX Super’ have recently been built in the shopping district of the’Haeundae Lotte Castle Star’ complex, a new apartment in Haeundae-gu, Busan. The inside was empty, with only a few bags of sweets and a few drinks. There was no cash register. Some responded, “Daldongna in the 1970s”. It meant that it was an unsuitable atmosphere for the new apartment that started moving in last September.

According to the real estate industry on the 12th, these supermarkets are stores temporarily set up to obtain’cigarette vouchers’. If you get a cigarette ticket, you can use it as a convenience store, and if you don’t get it, you can use it as a convenience store.

Cigarette rights refer to the right to sell cigarettes in stores. The exact term is’cigarette retailer’. You must be designated as a cigarette retailer by the local government before you can sell cigarettes at the store.

Tobacco retailers cannot be accepted by anyone applying. In order to prevent overcrowded competition between convenience stores, the law (Tobacco Business Act) stipulates that it must be at least 50m away from other cigarette retailers. Separation distance regulations are different for each local government, and some local governments in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do need to be at least 100m away from other cigarette retailers to apply as cigarette retailers.

As an exception, two or more cigarette retailers may be designated in one facility in consideration of the number of users in public transportation facilities such as stations, airports, bus terminals, and ship passenger terminals, or sports stadiums, amusement parks, and parks.

If a new apartment building like Haeundae Lotte Castle Star is built, and several shopping centers apply for a cigarette retailer designation at once, who will be given a cigarette ticket? Local governments must distribute to one retailer by lot through public announcement. Cigarette rights are an absolute item for convenience store management, so competition is fierce.

If you only have the store, you can apply for a cigarette ticket in a vacant room, but the reason why you put up a sign of’OO Super’ and fill up a small amount of sweets and drinks is to receive a’suitability investigation’ by the local government. Only stores that go through this survey will be given an opportunity to supply a lottery. In an investigation, local governments deprive them of the opportunity as they judge that the investigation is impossible if the store is unopened. So, they filled the signboards and supplies, even if they were sloppy.

In addition to Haeundae Lotte Castle Star, this was consistently seen in new apartment stores that were previously supplied. It is also called a’ghost mart’ because several marts temporarily line up in a single shopping street for cigarettes and then disappear like smoke.

Recently, there has been a case of selling after a contract to monopolize cigarette rights in a new apartment mall. Cigarette rights were given exclusively to the underground 101 (53㎡) in the shopping center of the’Gwangju Transcendence Halla Vivaldi’ complex in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province.

The expected supply price of this mall was about 614 million won, but it was recently sold for about 812 million won, which is about 200 million won more than this due to the crowd of investors. Dedicated 32-33㎡ basement units 102-107, which did not have cigarette rights, were sold in units of 410 million to 470 million won, which is 20 to 80 million won higher than the expected supply price. The popularity of the mall, which was given exclusively by cigarette rights, was much higher.

“The sales amount of cigarettes themselves is large,” said Sun Jong-pil, CEO of Sangga News Raida. “There are many people who buy cigarettes together while buying cigarettes, so whether or not they have a cigarette ticket determines 40% of their sales.” Because the stores and convenience stores have good monthly rent payment ability, of course, the buying and selling price of the stores that have cigarette vouchers is expensive,” he said.