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Prospector Ilson Mateus Rodrigues founded Grupo Mateus from a 50-meter grocery store in Balsas (MA) in 1986 and transformed the store into Brazil’s third-largest supermarket with revenues of R$ 43.5 billion in 2025 and over 490 units in nine states, according to the ABRAS 2026 Ranking.
The story of how a prospector from the interior of Maranhão built Brazil’s third-largest supermarket begins with a conversation at the mine in 1986. Ilson Mateus Rodrigues, born in Imperatriz in 1963, was working as a prospector when he heard that the advance of soybeans was transforming Balsas, in southern Maranhão, into the country’s new agricultural frontier, information that led him to open a 50-square-meter grocery store in the city that same year, a venture that in four decades would become Grupo Mateus, a chain that grossed R$ 43.5 billion in 2025 according to the ABRAS 2026 Ranking and today operates over 490 units in nine Brazilian states. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Ilson had already worked as a shoe shiner and a factory worker in a cachaça distillery, a trajectory that makes the Maranhão prospector one of the most improbable cases of business ascent in the history of Brazilian retail.
Grupo Mateus is currently the largest supermarket in Maranhão and the third largest in Brazil, trailing only Carrefour and Assaí according to data compiled by Exame magazine. The company’s headquarters are in São Luís, the capital of Maranhão, and the chain that the prospector founded with a grocery store in the interior has expanded into formats that include conventional supermarkets, the Mix Atacarejo wholesale-retail store created in 2007, the Bumba Meu Pão industrial bakery, and the Eletro Mateus home appliance chain, a diversification that transformed a single man’s business into a retail group with a presence in nine states across the country. The revenue of R$ 43.5 billion in 2025 positions Grupo Mateus among Brazil’s largest companies by revenue, a result built on a strategy that the prospector developed by observing the Northeastern market and combining proximity to low-income consumers with aggressive expansion into medium-sized cities.
How the prospector transformed a 50-square-meter grocery store into a supermarket chain
The decision to open the grocery store in Balsas was not an impulse: it was a market assessment the prospector made based on information circulating among mining workers. The advance of soybeans through the Maranhão cerrado in the 1980s brought rural producers, agricultural technicians, and workers who needed basic supplies to Balsas, and Ilson identified that the city would grow before most local merchants realized the opportunity, positioning his grocery store as a supply point for a population that was increasing along with the agricultural frontier. Two years after opening, in 1988, the 50-square-meter store had already transformed into a medium-sized supermarket, a growth that confirmed the prospector’s vision and financed the subsequent steps.
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The creation of Armazém Mateus, focused on wholesale, marked the first diversification of the business that the prospector started in Balsas. With wholesale, Ilson began to supply not only the final consumer but also small merchants in the region, a model that increased sales volume and diluted operational costs, a strategy that would be replicated in every city where Grupo Mateus would establish itself in the following decades. The prospector’s logic was simple and effective: arrive before major competitors in markets that were not yet of interest to national chains, consolidate presence, and build customer loyalty before the competition realized the potential of those areas.
Grupo Mateus’s expansion across nine Brazilian states
The prospector’s chain grew city by city in a trajectory that took almost two decades to move from the interior of Maranhão to the capital. In 2000, Imperatriz, Ilson’s hometown, gained its first unit, and Balsas inaugurated a hypermarket. In 2003, Grupo Mateus arrived in São Luís, the capital of Maranhão, a move that represented a change in scale because it placed the prospector’s chain in direct competition with national supermarket brands in an urban market of over one million inhabitants. The arrival in the capital did not intimidate: Grupo Mateus knew the Northeastern consumer better than the Southeastern chains operating in São Luís, an advantage that translated into accelerated growth and consolidation as the state’s largest supermarket.
The Mix Atacarejo cash & carry, launched in 2007, added a format that boosted the growth of the group founded by the prospector. The cash & carry model, which combines wholesale prices with direct access to the final consumer, was booming in Brazil at that time, and Grupo Mateus entered the segment with the advantage of already having a logistics structure and supplier base built over two decades in the Northeast. In 2011, the entry of the Duarte de Assis family from Minas Gerais, with a 30% stake, brought resources and experience that accelerated expansion to other states, and in 2020, the public offering of shares on B3 (the Brazilian stock exchange) allowed the group to raise capital in the financial market to finance growth that would lead it to over 490 units in nine states.
What differentiates the prospector’s supermarket from national competitors
Grupo Mateus differentiates itself from Carrefour and Assaí by having built its base in markets that major competitors historically neglected. While Brazil’s largest supermarket chains concentrated operations in the Southeast and South, the prospector expanded through the Northeast, North, and the interior of states where competition consisted of smaller regional supermarkets, a strategy that allowed Grupo Mateus to dominate markets before facing national-level competition. The deep understanding of low-income consumers, which Ilson developed since his grocery store days in Balsas, translated into product assortment, pricing policy, and store locations calibrated for an audience that the Southeast chains did not understand with the same precision.
Diversification into private labels and different formats strengthened the presence of the group founded by the prospector. The industrial bakery Bumba Meu Pão supplies bread to its own stores and to third parties, Eletro Mateus operates in the home appliance segment complementing food retail, and the combination of conventional supermarkets and cash & carry (Mix Atacarejo) allows the group to serve everyone from the consumer buying a few items for the week to the small merchant stocking their own store. The R$ 43.5 billion revenue in 2025 is a result of this diversification that the prospector began when he realized that a single grocery store would not be enough to capture the full commercial potential of the cities where he operated.
What the prospector’s trajectory reveals about Brazilian retail
The story of Ilson Mateus Rodrigues is exceptional for the scale of its outcome, but the pattern it follows is recognizable in Brazilian retail. Founders who started without capital, in small towns, with modest stores, and who grew by reinvesting profits, expanding to neighboring cities, and diversifying formats, built some of the country’s largest supermarket chains, and the prospector who opened a grocery store in Balsas in 1986 belongs to the same lineage of entrepreneurs who transformed Brazilian food retail in recent decades. Ilson’s differentiator was the speed with which he read the market (the conversation in the gold mine about soybeans in Balsas), the discipline of gradual expansion (14 years between the first store and arrival in the capital), and the willingness to go public on B3 in 2020 to finance growth that proprietary resources could not sustain.
With over 490 units in nine states and revenue that places Grupo Mateus among the country’s largest companies, the chain founded by the prospector continues to expand. The trajectory from shoeshine boy to prospector to billionaire supermarket owner is not a script that repeats frequently, but the decision Ilson made in 1986, to trade the uncertainty of prospecting for the predictability of commerce, was the point where the story changed, and the R$ 43.5 billion revenue in 2025 is a measure of how much that bet, made in a 50-square-meter grocery store in southern Maranhão, paid off.
And you, did you know the story of the prospector who founded Grupo Mateus? Have you ever shopped at one of the chain’s stores? Share your experience in the comments.
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