SEQUIM — The city’s newest supermarket, Grocery Outlet, will open to the public Saturday after a Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce ribbon-cutting today.
A grand opening celebration is planned from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the “bargain market,” 1045 W. Washington St., with the chamber’s ribbon-cutting at 5:30 p.m.
Cameron Catering of Sequim will serve food.
The official grand opening takes place at 8 a.m. Saturday with giveaways and food.
The new store is independently owned and operated by Mitch and Linda Hebert, who sold their store in Sparks, Nev., to move back to Washington state. They are from Longview.
The 17,784-square-foot Grocery Outlet and Ross Dress For Less are part of a new $4.5 million commercial project in Sequim Village Market Place.Ross and Grocery Outlet began construction in early December.
Grocery Outlet, based in Berkeley, Calif., has more than 130 stores — 35 of them in Washington state — and calls itself an “extreme value retailer” of food, beer, wine, toys and personal-care products.
Walmart is adding a 35,577-square-foot supermarket to the west side of the existing 113,000-square-foot Walmart store off West Washington Street at Priest Road.
It will be Sequim’s fourth supermarket, not including Sequim’s Costco, which sells large volumes of bulk groceries, and Sunny Farms Country Store in Carlsborg, which has a loyal following of shoppers in Clallam and Jefferson counties.
Sequim has long had Safeway and QFC supermarkets.
Between 40 and 45 employees were hired at Ross and another 85 are being hired for the Walmart grocery addition. Walmart already employs about 200 in Sequim.
The Walmart grocery store project, plus a remodeling of the existing Walmart store, is valued at $3.8 million, city documents show.
The addition and remodeling will in effect match the Walmart megastore that opened earlier this year east of Port Angeles on U.S. Highway 101 at Kolonels Way.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
