SURREY — One of B.C.’s oldest and largest companies is expanding its Fresh St. Market brand in Surrey.
H.Y. Louie Co. Ltd. will open a second such grocery store in the city this summer, in the Panorama Village shopping mall.
A work crew is currently renovating the 23,000-square-foot space, located on the northwest corner of 152nd Street and Highway 10, near Tong Louie Family YMCA.
“We anticipate opening sometime in the middle of August,” Mark McCurdy, the company’s general manager of marketing and brand development, told the Now on Friday (April 8).
A Fresh St. Market store opened in the Fleetwood area in December of 2013, a year after the opening of a flagship store in West Vancouver.
At Panorama Village (pictured), the franchise operator of the IGA decided to move on, McCurdy said, and the store was closed in late February.
“We thought it was a good opportunity (to open a Fresh St. Market store), based upon our store in Fleetwood, which we deem a great success,” McCurdy said. “The customer feedback has been extremely positive, and we’ve been getting requests from people in Surrey proper, Cloverdale, Langley – ‘Hey, open a store in our area.'”
As the name suggests, Fresh St. Market stores focus on fresh food.
“A traditional grocery store will probably have about 60 per cent dry goods and 40 per cent fresh, and we flipped that, so we’re 60 per cent fresh and 40 per cent dry goods,” McCurdy explained.
“We try to concentrate more on the pure food shop and try not to bring in too many other over-and-above items that don’t really relate to food. We’re still nurturing that, of course, through customer feedback and what sells and doesn’t sell, but we’re getting closer every day on a real pure food shop.”
At the Bentall Kennedy-controlled Panorama Village mall, the Fresh St. Market store is located near the Mahek restaurant where fire broke out last September. The restaurant has been closed ever since, and large metal gates surround the retail space.
tom.zillich@thenownewspaper.com
