The best chains to look for are Carrefour (again, the big, suburban stores, not the in-town Carrefour Market convenience stores), Auchan and E. Leclerc.
Similarly, the Support Group for Rural Development (GADRU) is repairing homes around the towns of Carrefour and Kenscoff in Haiti's western province.
Today shoppers can find low prices and infinite choice online, so fewer bother to drive to an out-of-town hypermarket.European demography hurts Carrefour, too.
10.21am: Over at the US papers, the Miami Herald has a report from the eerily empty streets of Carrefour, the hillside town close the epicentre of the quake.
Dear Vice, I was on a road trip through France last week and on the motorway we'd pass all the standard out-of-town superstores like Ikea and Carrefour.
The person, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the focus on the Planet stores, which were meant to make Carrefour's out-of-town stores into shopping destinations, had been ill advised considering the economic situation.
At a Carrefour at the opposite end of town, shoppers were happy to fill their carts without interference.
Shoppers increasingly prefer supermarkets and corner stores, or buying online, to trekking to an out-of-town hypermarket, as the latest figures from both Carrefour and Casino confirm.
After passing through towns with colourful names such as Limonade and Carrefour La Mort on a highway built by the Dominican Republic after the 2010 earthquake, we finally made it to Milot.
In Carrefour at Montesson, a giant out-of-town hypermarket west of Paris, the bakery shelves are stacked with "Harry's American Sandwich" bread, a sliced product that has taken the land of the baguette by storm.
Five minutes away, across the Rhône, the larger town of Beaucaire has a branch of the French hypermarket Carrefour.
