Quality Foods opens first store in Victoria
Vancouver Island chain Quality Foods has opened its first store in the competitive Victoria market.
Situated in the suburb of Langford, just west of Victoria, the store was officially opened on Thursday inside a former furniture outlet.
It is the first of two stores Quality Foods had previously said it would open in Victoria. The other, in the View Royal area, was scheduled to open sometime next year.
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Quality Foods has 11 other stores, but none so far have been in Victoria, the island’s biggest metro market and the provincial capital.
Most of the company’s stores are located 100 kilometres or more up Vancouver Island’s eastern coast in places like Nanaimo, Parksville, Qualicum Beach and Comox.
The company’s first Victoria location has been long in the making.
“We’ve been trying for many years to get in to Victoria, but we’ve either been outbid by the players that were there or not seen by developers as the No. 1 pick as a tenant,” Noel Hayward, one of the chain’s founders, told Canadian Grocer last year when plans for the Langford store were announced.
But Hayward added that, “Our company has expanded and grown and we are being approached a lot more by developers to be an anchor tenant.”
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Quality Foods isn’t the only food retailer with eyes on Victoria. In February, Sobeys sold all four of its Safeway stores in the city to Overwaitea Food Group, which owns the Save-on Foods banner.
Last year Target moved into the city and Walmart also has expanded. Other major food retailers in the city include Thrifty Foods, a Sobeys subsidiary.
Quality Foods, which started with one store in Qualicum Beach in 1982, now marks its Vancouver Island roots by billing itself as “an Island Original.”
“We are one of the few grocers who continue to be island-owned,” a company press release stated.
The new store in Victoria of around 45,000 sq. ft., includes many features that Quality Foods officials say are popular at other locations, including a hot Chinese kitchen, in-store-made fresh sushi and forno-baked pizza.
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A new feature is a maple and cherry wood smoker for slow cooking pulled pork and beef brisket that the company said is “a first in the grocery industry on Vancouver Island.”
Quality Foods officials celebrated the store opening Thursday with a six-foot cake. “We are very excited to open the first QF in the Greater Victoria area, and we hope you enjoy everything the new store has to offer,” store manager Jordan Schley said at the opening.
A contest was also underway giving customers three opportunities each day to win the value of their grocery purchase instantly at the checkout.
Shoppers who used Quality Foods' Q-Card loyalty card were also automatically entered into a contest to win a new Mini Cooper.