A date has been set for the opening of one of Richmond’s new FreshCo discount supermarket stores.
The store at Broadmoor Shopping centre, on No. 3 and Williams roads, will open its doors on Thursday, May 16.
A FreshCo grocery store (Photo courtesy Sobeys)
When the Richmond News caught up Tuesday with the franchise’s owner/operator Scott Marshall, he said they will have a grand opening at 7 a.m. that day.
“This will be discount done right. Our margins are very low, so that saving is passed onto the customer. Volume (of sales) is the key for us,” said Marshall, as the front entrance to the store was being painted.
“We’ll be putting the sign up later this week. We have a little over 100 staff right now, they had their orientation this week.”
FreshCo’s owners, Sobeys, closed Richmond’s two former Safeway stores – at Blundell and Broadmoor shopping centres – last summer.
Their replacement, FreshCo, will be among 12 across Western Canada to open this spring.
Last week, FreshCo opened its first location in the region in Mission.
The closure of the Blundell and Broadmoor stores last year was shrouded in uncertainty, amid fears for unionized workers’ collective agreements.
Last July, nine Safeway stores in Metro Vancouver closed and the union representing workers claimed that the closures impacted 1,000 employees.
At the time, the workers’ union, UFCW 1518, called the closures “an insult and an outrage.”
The Richmond News reported in April, 2018 how Safeway in Western Canada ran into financial problems since Sobeys purchased the well-known brand name supermarket.
UFCW had claimed the stores had been mismanaged and the company was trying to lower wages for the remaining workers.
