The Giant Company deepens roots in Philadelphia with planned new stores

Dive Brief:

The Giant Company plans to grow its presence in Philadelphia by opening four new stores in the city by 2023, the Ahold Delhaize banner announced on Monday.
A 32,000-square-foot Heirloom Market store is planned for the Fashion District. Three larger Giant stores ranging from 40,000 to 50,000 square feet are also expected to debut in the city. The grocer said it will reveal opening dates and amenities for each store in the future.
The announcement comes at a time when Giant is focusing its attention on Philadelphia, which is seeing grocery competition heat up.

Dive Insight:

The news about the four planned locations arrives a few months after the Carlisle, Pennsylvania-based grocer opened its 65,000-square-foot flagship store in Center City Philadelphia.

The upcoming stores are scattered around the city. A 40,000-square-foot Giant store will sit at the corner of Washington Avenue and South Broad Street. Meanwhile, a 46,000-square-foot store is slated to open on Columbus Boulevard at the corner of Reed Street, while a 50,000-square-foot store will come to the intersection of North Broad and Spring Garden streets. The Heirloom Market store will be at 801 Market St.

The new stores will add roughly 700 jobs in total, more than doubling Giant’s number of employees in Philadelphia, according to the press release.

In addition to the flagship store, the grocer has three Heirloom Market stores and a Giant store in the northeast region of the City of Brotherly Love, per a company spokesperson. A 67,000-square-foot store in a different part of Northeast Philadelphia was announced in February and is slated to open later this year. The grocer is also working on its new Giant Direct e-commerce fulfillment center on Island Avenue, which is slated to open in November and will help boost capacity and provide faster order fulfillment, the company said in the press release.

All in all, Giant has invested more than $135 million in Philadelphia as competition heats up. European discounters Lidl and Aldi have recently arrived in the city as they expand across the U.S., while Colorado-based Leevers Supermarkets bought more than a dozen stores in the Philadelphia market from Save A Lot, Food Trade News reported. Amazon Fresh is also heading to the area with a location confirmed in Bucks County.