Walmart opens its smallest store ever

With more than 3,000 Walmart Supercenter stores in the United States averaging 182,000 square feet, Walmart has filled suburban and rural American with this:

Massive stores, massive parking lots.

But Walmart is expanding its taste for tiny stores with a growing number of stores that look like this:

That's about 15,000 square feet with a noticeably smaller parking lot.

And Walmart is going even smaller.

Try 2,500 square feet. (The average Supercenter is about 75 times larger.)

That's the size of a new Walmart on Campus store at Georgia Tech University, the smallest Walmart ever according to Atlanta Magazine. Here's what it has to offer in the tiny space:

Dubbed “Walmart on Campus,” the midtown Atlanta store offers everything from ink jets to ice cream to shampoo to cold cuts. “I’m pretty sure they have almost everything I’d buy,” said one student as she squeezed past me in the frozen food aisle. While the store doesn’t offer bikes or build-it-yourself furniture, I’d say that student made a pretty fair assessment.

So while Walmart is struggling to get its smaller stores into urban areas like Washington, D.C., campuses might prove to be a more welcoming environment for the retailer. This is the third Walmart on Campus store to open in the U.S.

But don't expect Walmart to abandon its super-sized stores. Earlier this year, Walmart said it plans to add 125 total Supercenter stores and 115 stores under 60,000 square feet in 2013. Though maybe Walmart should also consider the downsizing tactic in its Supercenters. All the food is going bad.

Read more (and check out pictures of the store): Atlanta Magazine

Photos:Dystopos and reallyboring via Flickr

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com