By Lori Ehde
This will be a big weekend for Glen Gust and his Glen’s Food Center employees.
The store will close doors on its current Lincoln Street location at 6 p.m. Sunday and will reopen Monday morning in its new building two blocks south in the former Jubilee Foods building.
Although Tony Bosch built the new Jubilee store only 2 1/2 years ago, Gust invested a significant amount of remodeling into the building to suit his needs.
For example, the Jubilee deli didn’t have a bakery, since most of its baked goods were prepared off site and brought in.
So, the biggest project was remodeling the deli and adding a bakery to the location.
One other physical change will be a new entrance directly into the deli. Gust said the entrance will be convenient for the deli customers and it will free up parking space for grocery customers near the main entrance.
In addition, Gust removed the Jubilee checkout counters, which required customers to unload their own carts. Glen’s checkout counters, which are cashier unloaded, will replace them.
Other transitional issues include signage and repainting the store to the Affiliated Grocers colors, and restocking the store so items will be on the same shelves as they were in the former Glen’s location.
Along with expanding from roughly 20,000 to 30,000 square feet, Glen’s shoppers will also benefit from the larger parking lot at the new location.
"It’s been a lot of fun," said Gust, who’s been working 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. most days the past few weeks.
"The challenge for us was to get into the new facility as soon as we could, because we knew our existing facility and parking couldn’t handle it."
He said he looks forward to next week, when the move is complete.
"Everyone who works at the store has been real happy about taking care of our customers," Gust said.
"And we’re ready to get into that bigger store. It’s going to be great."
