Healthy Home Market to Open Biggest Store

Natural food grocer Healthy Home Market has entered into a lease agreement with Alex Lee Inc. to open a store in Lenoir, N.C., early next year. The new location will replace a JustSave Foods store, one of the supermarket banners that Alex Lee owns. At 36,000 square feet the Farm 2 Family Foods by Healthy Home Market will be the largest Healthy Home Market store.

“We felt the Lenoir community was the perfect place to expand our Healthy Home Market brand,” said Chad Hartman, director of marketing for the grocer, which has three Charlotte, N.C.-area locations. “We hope the new Farm 2 Family Foods store will give the community an opportunity to eat healthier and shop local.”

 Farm 2 Family Foods will offer the same product selections as the other Healthy Home Market stores, except with a bigger selection of mainstream brands, fresh produce and custom-cut meats. "We will also have a large vitamin department, one of our strengths in the Healthy Home Market stores," Hartman told Progressive Grocer.

Hartman added that "current [JustSave] employees [will] come aboard as Healthy Home Market employees, and we expect to hire another five to 15 full- and part-time employees."

Hickory, N.C.-based Alex Lee is the parent company of wholesale grocery distributor Merchants Distributors and supermarket chains Lowes Foods and JustSave Foods.

Farm 2 Family Foods by Healthy Home Market will hold a grand-opening celebration in February 2017. As for future locations, Hartman said: "We are going to concentrate on making Lenoir a great community store first; then we'll see. Our eyes are always open for a good opportunity to work with a community to eat healthier and shop local."