Grocery Outlet Foothill More than just a Ribbon Cutting – by Mike Lucas
City leaders did more than just cut a ribbon on Aug. 5 when they formally launched the new Grocery Outlet Bargain Market at 165 E. Foothill Blvd.
They opened a new chapter in the story of North Arcadia’s commercial district – and they left everyone wondering: What’s next?
The newest link in the Emeryville-based Grocery Outlet chain opened April 15, part of a muscular excursion into the Southern California retail landscape. Listed as GO on Nasdaq, the brand aims to win over customers with what it calls an exciting shopping experience akin to treasure-hunting.
“We have all kinds of crazy stuff. Organic food, gourmet food, brands you know and brands you’ve never heard of,” said Erin Johnstone, one of the store’s two owner-operators. “It’s really fun.”
So far so good, said Bryan Race, the other half of the owner-operator team running the 17,000-square-foot, 20-employee store.
“People are catching on,” he said. “It’s a place you have to come in and experience.”
Johnstone and Race crossed paths when they both worked at the Trader Joe’s in Palm Desert, where they hatched their plan to go their own way in the food staples segment.
“We kind of found out we had a passion for this business and so we worked hard and finally got our opportunity,” he said.
Race is a native of Washington State, where his family was in the grocery game and he earned a business degree at Western Washington University at Bellingham. Johnstone grew up in Cerritos but took a circuitous route to Foothill Boulevard, by way of a Criminal Justice degree from Cal State Fullerton and a stint as a Sheriff’s dispatcher on Catalina Island.
The chain’s quirky treasure-hunt sensibility stems naturally from the chain’s origins in 1946, when founder Jim Reid opened a military surplus store in the San Francisco Bay Area. Rummaging through the war-surplus depots for boots, tarps, mess kits, ammo boxes and the like was a popular weekend activity for World War II veterans for decades.
GO went public in 2019 at $22 a share, and it now has more than 300 stores nationwide. The company has a unique business model: the stores are all owned and operated by independent contractors rather than franchisees. They purchase their supplies from the company, but tailor their inventory to the tastes of their customers.
Race and Johnstone launched their owner-operator careers five years ago, opening the Grocery Outlet at Huntington Drive and Buena Vista Street.
“We put in a lot of hundred-hour weeks,” Race said. The success of that location led to the opportunity in North Arcadia, he said, so they sold out in Duarte and headed west.
Sure enough, he discovered that consumers just a few miles apart can have markedly different palates.
“In Duarte, the everyday staples move pretty well, but up here, our customers like the high-end items. Gourmet foods, and the wine; they love the wine,” he said. To keep them happy, he offers a Wednesday special: buy six bottles and get a 10 percent discount.
Arcadia Mayor Sho Tay said North Arcadia residents report that they’re pleased with the new grocery store, which moved into the former Rite-Aid space. Built in 1966 for Sav-On Osco, city records indicate, it was occupied continuously until the pharmacy chain moved out two years ago.
It’s also important for the city and surrounding communities to keep retail space occupied by thriving tenants willing to pay competitive rents; one retail metrics service gave the rent for 165 E. Foothill at $2.89 per square foot, which is a bit more than landlords get for similar space in surrounding areas.
“This is what people told me they wanted up here,” said Tay. “I think they’ll be pretty happy with it.”
Pasadena commercial real estate developer Dan Bacani, who represented the landlord in the deal, said the new store fills a need in North Arcadia that an earlier chain, Fresh & Easy, tried to fill when it moved into the old Vons space on the other side of the Highlander Shopping Center – but the bid fizzled out in 2015. That space is now slated for professional services use.
“Fresh & Easy had their own brands that people weren’t familiar with,” Bacani said. “Grocery Outlet has national brands. It has Starbucks. My wife loves it. It gives people a choice, something different from the Ralphs.”
What’s next? A few hundred feet from the new GO is the vacant building occupied for nearly 14 years by a Walgreen’s – and the site before that of the city’s much-beloved Shakey’s for more than 40 years.
After nearly 21 months, the “For Lease” sign on the building suddenly vanished.
It looks like the next chapter of the North Arcadia commercial district will be written soon.
–Mike Lucas
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Mike Lucas is a retired journalist who has been County Editor at the San Marino Tribune, a copy editor and staff writer at the Los Angeles Times and City Editor at the Las Vegas Sun.