In the context of retail internationalization it is observable that retailers from West European countries take their business models known from their home countries into the newly entered markets. In this sense there are at least three development trends in conjunction with globalization, which include global sourcing, retail branding and establishing of strictly coordinated vertical linkages (supply chain networks or netchains). In our paper we firstly describe the internationalization process of the retail business, and based on this, elaborate on structural changes resulting from and connected with internationalization process that are in the center of interest to the food industry. Further on, we focus on the situation in the agri-food business of Russia and describe whether the main tendencies of European retail development and the consequences of their influence are found there, as well as discuss outlook of future development of the Russian agri-food business in the context of supply chain management.