Middle East Business
Retail group opens first Qatar hypermarket with eight more outlets in the pipeline
By Staff Writer | 21 August 2026
The Al Gharrafa store occupies the Old Passport Office building in Doha and is the group's 152nd worldwide, with eight further Qatar outlets stated to be in the pipeline.
Nesto has entered the Qatari market with the opening of its first hypermarket, at Al Gharrafa in Doha. The store is the group's 152nd worldwide. The company states that eight further outlets are in the pipeline across Qatar.
The premises are the Old Passport Office building at Al Gharrafa. The opening ceremony was held there on Wednesday 19 August at 4pm, with the store trading from 5pm the same day. Nothing has been published about the scope of the works carried out to convert the building, the contractor engaged or the programme, and none of that is assumed here.
Qatar has been a highly anticipated destination in Nesto's growth journey, and we are proud to finally bring the Nesto experience to customers here.
Jamal Kunhiparambath, Managing Director of Nesto Group
Eight outlets is a pipeline, not a programme
For a fit-out contractor or a project manager working in Qatar, the number that matters is the eight. It is the only forward-looking figure the company has given, and it is given without locations, without floor areas, without values and without dates.
A stated pipeline of eight stores is an intention. It is not a committed programme, and it should not be read as eight procurements to bid for within any particular period.
The distinction is worth holding on to because retail roll-outs of this kind are usually let package by package as each site is secured, so the number of buildings named at launch and the number that reach site within two years are routinely different. What a roll-out of that shape does create, where it happens, is a run of repeat work under broadly similar specifications, and that is a different commercial proposition from a single large project. It rewards a contractor who can hold a team together between sites and price the second store off the first, and it exposes one who cannot.
Reusing an existing building
The more interesting point for anyone working on the technical side is the premises. Putting a hypermarket into a building constructed as a government office is not a fit-out in the ordinary sense. Retail floors of that type need loading access, cold rooms and their drainage, substantial mechanical plant, floor loadings for racking and trolley traffic, and escape provision sized for a very different occupancy from an office. Where a structure was not designed for those loads, the works reach the frame.
None of that has been described in what has been published. It is set out here as the class of issue such a conversion raises, not as a statement about this building, and anyone pricing similar work in Doha should treat the survey rather than the floor plan as the starting point.
The store sells fresh produce, food and groceries, household essentials, fashion, electronics and lifestyle products, which is the range that drives the cold and the plant. The company says the expansion is expected to generate employment and new partnerships within the local retail sector, and it gives no figure for either.
What would make the eight real is a location and a date for the second store. Until one appears, this is one building trading and a stated intention behind it.