Save-On-Foods planning 3 Saskatoon stores
Save-On-Foods will open three supermarkets in Saskatoon within the next 18 months and consider adding three more in the coming years, according to its president.
“We’d like to have six stores in the city of Saskatoon,” Darrell Jones told reporters after a groundbreaking ceremony for the chain’s first Saskatoon store, which is expected to open in Kensington in early 2017.
The company will evaluate the first three stores’ performance before deciding to build more, Jones said, adding Save- On-Foods is also open to considering opportunities in the city’s core.
“This is a great city and easily able to take on six Save- On-Foods stores, but … ultimately in the retail food business — or in any retail business — the customers decide with their wallets and with their feet whether or not you do a great job.”
Based in Langley, B.C., Save-On-Foods is owned by the Jim Pattison Group and operates about 150 stores in Canada.
In July 2015, the company announced plans to expand into Saskatchewan; its first store in the province opened earlier this year in Regina.
The company’s Saskatchewan stores are part of a broader expansion. Save-On-Foods has said it plans to build about 50 new stores over the next five years; about 25 are in various stages of development.
Jones said the 33,000-squarefoot Kensington store, to be the anchor tenant in Dream Development’s $32 million retail project in the city’s west end, will be followed by larger stores on Cumberland Avenue and in Brighton.
The nine-acre Kensington development, which Dream Development’s senior vice president of retail and commercial development Josh Kaufman described as a “community centre,” will also include a Scotiabank branch and a Shoppers Drug Mart.
Rather than replicate the nearby Blairmore big-box centre, Dream Development — which built Stonebridge, among other projects in the city — designed the complex to be accessible for local residents, Kaufman said.
Jones said Save- On-Foods wants to contribute to Saskatoon by stocking its stores with “as much local product as we can,” and offer services like online shopping and grocery deliveries.