Does brand matter? Yes—but in retail terrain matters more.

On 4 February 2025, after 47 years of trade, Woolworths closed its Neutral Bay store on Grosvenor Street, north of Military Road. Seventy-one days later, the same doors reopened as Coles.

Anyone who knows the area knows that Military Road cuts a swathe through the Lower North Shore like a raging river; people don’t cross it unless they need to—and in retail, that friction is everything. The upshot: locals now have two Coles (Big Bear and Grosvenor Street) a few hundred metres apart north of Military Road, and one Woolworths to the south on Rangers Road.

These changes set the frame for a simple question with awkward implications: do shoppers follow the brand—or the line of least resistance? In other words, does brand matter here—or does convenience win when the offer is broadly like-for-like?

The distribution of supermarkets in Neutral Bay. Red bubble: rebranded Grosvenor Street Store

What we set out to learn

1. Would shoppers treat Coles—Grosvenor Street as a like-for-like replacement for the long-running Woolworths?

2. What impact—if any—would the new north-side Coles have on Big Bear, just a few hundred metres away?

   
   

Method

Using Loculyze Prospector—our AI-powered analytics platform that leverages privacy-compliant mobile signal data, open-source datasets, and proprietary modelling—we tracked MAT (moving annual total) visits and our sales index from June ’24 → June ’25 across three destinations:

• Big Bear Shopping Centre (centre-level; includes its in-centre Coles)

• Grosvenor Street store as it transitioned from Woolworths → Coles

• Woolworths—Rangers Road

  
  

Findings

As you’d expect, Big Bear saw a small bounce when the Grosvenor Street store closed, and those gains unwound once Coles opened. Comparing January 2025 (pre-change) to June 2025 (post-change, fully bedded in):

• Annual visits (MAT)

  • Big Bear: +0.2%

  • Grosvenor Street (rebranded Coles): +1.1%

  • Woolworths—Rangers Road: +1.5%

    
    

• Annual sales (sales index, MAT)

  • Big Bear: +2%

  • Grosvenor Street (Coles): +5%

  • Woolworths—Rangers Road: +5%

    
    

Read it this way: the new Grosvenor Street Coles has shaved a little growth from Big Bear, but it’s a blip on Big Bear’s trajectory. The new Coles and the existing Woolworths are both growing at similar clips. Hardly seismic shifts.

The street that decides

Our trade-area view shows Military Road behaves like a behavioural barrier. When Woolworths historically straddled both sides (Grosvenor St and Rangers Rd), it effectively served two micro-catchments. With Coles now clustered north and Woolworths south, coverage mirrors the riverbanks: same-side capture dominates; cross-street switching is rare unless there’s a strong need.

Primary Trade Areas of Grosvenor Street Store (Nth) and Woolworths Rangers Road (Sth)

Brand vs convenience

• Brand matters—at the margins. Launch weeks, promotions, and genuinely different offers can move the needle.

• But mostly, convenience wins. With two Coles on the same (north) side of Military Road and Woolworths on the south, shoppers hew to the same-side option. The time/attention toll of crossing a hostile arterial outweighs the logo on the door.

  
  

Implications for landlords & operators

• Micro-geography > macro-branding. Side-of-street, crossing quality, and signal wait times quietly arbitrate share.

• Duplication can be coverage. Two stores of the same brand on one side aren’t necessarily redundant in complex urban landscapes.

Final thoughts

On the face of it, two Coles within a few hundred metres looks like cannibalisation waiting to happen; in fact, Coles read the terrain. By concentrating on the north side of Military Road, it took control of the northern catchment, while its forthcoming redevelopment to Neutral Bay Village will lift critical mass and widen the store’s pull—even across the road. Woolworths ceded an entire north-side store in an affluent enclave—a foothold now feeding Coles; Coles played a blinder.