A truly Dominican company providing the country’s best retail experience

For over 90 years, Plaza Lama has been supplying the best quality, better-priced products and services nationwide. Now, they are looking forward.

“Our mission is to provide the best shopping experience in the Dominican Republic”, states Mr. Pedro Lama, CEO of Plaza Lama. Considered the number one mega-store in the country, Plaza Lama is a three-generation family affair that started in 1929 as a shoe store, and later diversified by including household appliances, textiles, food and other consumer products, making it what it is today: the country’s preferred retail store. In 2000, Plaza Lama started expanding into various niche markets and is now part of of Grupo Lama, a larger conglomerate that not only specializes in the distribution of mass consumer products in department stores, but also in automobiles, with the importation and distribution of family and cargo vehicles; and natural gas, with the founding in 2008 of SGN, Soluciones en Gas Natural, the country’s first company to distribute natural gas for vehicles (NGV).

More recently, Grupo Lama expanded into telecommunications with the launch of their electronic Plaza Lama App in 2022. This new app allows customers to purchase products online and make payments securely and easily. They can place orders online both nationally or from abroad, have them delivered to their homes or pick them up at a nearby Plaza Lama store, saving time and avoiding long lines; as well as having access to exclusive offers and promotions. As Mr. Lama explains, “Plaza Lama App seeks to offer a more convenient and efficient shopping experience to its customers with its direct communication platform. At the same time, it contributes to improving the company’s operational ef- ficiency with better order management, reducing store wait times and improving customer satisfaction.”

Furthermore, last year Plaza Lama inaugurated a $US 70 million state-of-the-art logistics center for the production and distribution of food products. The innovative production center is set to standardize processes and products with its modern food laboratories, cargo transportation equipment and the best industrial safety systems. The complex has facilities of 27,600 square meters with four operative business units: pastry-bakery, delicatessen, fruit-vegetables and butchery, plus a cold room of 4,000 square meters. The center is expected to generate more than 500 new, highly-qualified direct jobs, surpassing Plaza Lama’s current 3600 employees. “With this project we support the vision of our president: that every Dominican should have a decent job, and that companies should focus on increasing the country’s production”, assures Mr. Lama.

In the future, Plaza Lama is keen to keep on growing on both, a national and international level. That is why they have started distributing household appliances to the U.S. and expect to expand soon into Panama and other Latin American markets.

Like Mr. Lama explains, “we are becoming a multinational company. We have a great potential for expansion due to our great diversity of customers and products, which are adapted to different markets, both wholesalers and retailers.” Above all, Plaza Lama will keep doing what they know best: offering the best brands, the best quality and the best prices, so they can continue to be the Dominican Republic’s preferred mega-store.

The non-alcoholic beverages sector generates 8,000 direct jobs and 30,000 indirect jobs in the Dominican Republic.

“A world without waste”, by 2025, 100% of its packaging will be recyclable, and at least, 50% of its packaging will be returnable. In order to achieve the 2030 goal of collecting and recycling 100% of its packaging.