The Jefferson Hy-Vee grocery store will open next Tuesday, Feb. 24, at 6 am. According to store manager Lori Subbert, no ribbon cutting is planned. At 6 am the doors will be unlocked and the store will be open for business.
Regular hours will be 5 am to midnight, seven days a week. The Market Café will be open from 6 am to 10 pm daily, and the pharmacy will be open Monday-Friday from 8 am to 7 pm, Saturdays from 8 to 5 pm, and Sundays from 10 am to 5 pm.
Many of the Hy-Vee corporate officers were at the store last Thursday, including chairman of the board and CEO Randy Edeker. Edeker explained that the Jefferson store is the first of two new downsized stores, with the second under construction in Winterset. While most new Hy-Vee stores are about 92,000 square feet, the smaller stores are about one-third that size. “We think this is a great size of store for this size of community,” Edeker said.
“There is an idea that people in small towns don’t like good food,” he said. “We know that isn’t true. Our challenge was to piece the store together proportionally to include all the departments of a larger store.”
The Jefferson store will not have a floral department, but it does include health and organic food, bulk food, a hot food bar, a bakery, a delicatessen, fresh and frozen seafood, wine and spirits and more.
Edeker said that about 2-1/2 years ago he looked at towns in Iowa with populations between 3,000 and 4,000 as a place for the company to expand. He had a list of about a dozen towns, he said, and Jefferson rose to the top. “Hy-Vee has had a strong pharmacy presence here, and we saw a need for this style of store here. We just thought this would be a good town for a store.”
He said the location in a residential neighborhood isn’t typical for Hy-Vee, but he was pleased to find the property available. “The center of town is the square. We wanted to be close to that, and to the highway,” he said.
The company took extra care in planning parking lot lighting to limit light intrusion in the neighborhood. Also, there will be no deliveries to the store before 6 am, Edeker said.
Subbert said the store will be a “big part of the community,” that she is eager to see the company “give back to the community.”
The new store will open with 59 fulltime employees and 178 part-time employees. All 17 employees of the existing Hy-Vee Drugstore will make the move to the new store.
On Subbert’s management team are Kim Coffin, manager of store operations; Jon Quast, assistant manager of store operations; Kels Morrissey, assistant manager of perishables; and Sita Pasillas, Rae Olerich, Jenni Hollman and Rianna Stott, assistant managers.
Also working as part-time employees are several adults with special needs. “They add a gift to our store,” Subbert said. “They all have special talents. If they’re doing something they aren’t up to, we’ll find something else for them. It’s a passion of mine.”
