Hilltop’s 6-year-old Save-A-Lot discount grocery store is joining two other Puget Sound Save-A-Lot stores on the closure list.
Joe Michael, the store’s manager, said the operation at 1105 Martin Luther King Jr. Way will shut down Oct. 12.
“We had a good run,” he said. “We made a lot of friends and enjoyed the neighborhood while it lasted.”
Michael said the licensed store couldn’t survive alone after Minnesota-based SuperValu Inc. last week decided to close down its company-owned stores on Pacific Avenue in Tacoma and in Port Orchard.
“We had a store that they couldn’t supply after they decided to pull out of the Pacific Northwest,” he said.
The store employed about 15 workers.
The recruitment of Save-A-Lot to Hilltop was touted as a major victory for the Hilltop business district when it opened in September 2006. The store occupied a former Rite Aid drug store that had closed down.
SuperValu last week announced it was closing 60 underperforming stores nationwide in a bid to improve its financial results.
Eight of the stores were in the Puget Sound area. Five were in the South Sound.
The chain will also close Albertsons supermarkets in Lacey, Bonney Lake, Auburn, Kent, Marysville and Kirkland, said Albertsons spokeswoman Lilia Rodriguez.
SuperValu’s first-quarter profits, reported in June, fell by half, and the company replaced CEO Craig Herkert.
The nation’s traditional large grocery chains such as SuperValu have been faced with new competition from discount chains such as Walmart and Target and even drug stores that now are offering convenience store-sized grocery sections in their stores.
john.gillie@thenewstribune.com 253-597-8663
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