Overwaitea Food Group will shutter its Terminal Park grocery store in February after more than three decades in the neighbourhood.
Overwaitea Food Group announced plans to close Terminal Park Save-on-Foods at 6 p.m. on Feb. 5 as it turns its attention to its new Brooks Landing store.
The Terminal Park grocery – formerly Overwaitea Foods – has been in the area since 1957 and in its current location since 1980. Sixty-eight employees work at the store and are now in talks with the company about their options, including the potential to stay on with the company in other locations, according to spokeswoman Julie Dickson Olmstead, who says staff were informed of the closure last Monday.
The move to shutter the grocery comes on the heels of last year's acquisition of three Thrifty Food stores from Sobeys, including the Brooks Landing site just two kilometers away. Olmstead said the four stores in Nanaimo, two in close proximity to one another, isn't practical and doesn't work for the business.
“So we are moving the business from the Terminal Park location over to the newest store, which is Brooks Landing,” she said. “We've just opened a brand new pharmacy there and completed a number of significant upgrades and we are looking forward to moving. Hopefully the customers will move with us.”
Olmstead said Overwaitea Food Group doesn't have any long-term strategy information it can share at this time around what will happen at the site, but will maintain ownership over the building in Terminal Park shopping centre.