What was supposed to be yet another boom-day installment of luxury living is set to open as a discount grocery store in March. WinCo Foods, located at the southeast corner of Stephanie Street and Wigwam Parkway in Henderson, is located on the site of the former Stephanie Village concept, which was a high-density mixed-use condo lifestyle project in 2007.
Instead, Henderson grocery shoppers will enjoy deep discounts on name-brand items, produce, deli and bakery goods, said WinCo spokesman Michael Read. WinCo's opening will be the 82nd installment of the employee-owned company, which started in 1967 and has a pension plan that today matches about 20 percent of an employee's annual salary.
The store has hired the roughly 200 employees it will need to run the 24-7 operation. Employees are eligible for the pension plan after six months and 500 hours of service and must work at least 1,000 hours per year to keep their eligibility.
"It's exactly that kind of vehicle for loyalty and ownership that we think makes our workforce stable and generally highly motivated to provide good service," Read added.
That said, WinCo features a low-service, low-price model that includes clients bagging their own groceries. Read further clarified that the concept is based on having the lowest everyday price.
Often grocery stores have particular items reduced at certain times to draw customers into their stores in hopes they'll buy higher mark-up items when they come in to buy the lower-priced sale items. For WinCo, it's about consistently lower pricing every day.
"We're not going to be the cheapest on every item," Read explained. "We do very thorough price checks within our trade areas … we routinely make adjustments to live up to our (low price) promise."
WinCo does very little advertising and relies mostly on word-of-mouth f++or its business. While the company likely will use a mailer campaign when it first arrives to town, it is not the norm for it to do so for the long haul.
The 94,000-square-foot grocery store is nearly double the size of most grocery stores, which are usually about 50,000 to 55,000 square feet. Upon entering, one of the first things customers will see is the store's "Wall of Values," which houses particularly deeply discounted items in the store at that time. Wider aisles and a roomy atmosphere are also staples of the WinCo experience.
The company likes to keep its expense structure under wraps. Read couldn't divulge the project cost, but county records reveal the property was purchased for $10 and "other good and valuable consideration."
The nearly 14-acre site was purchased from Florida-based WG Stephanie LLC, which, in 2009, paid $4 million to Australia-based real estate investment house Babcock and Brown, a partner in Stephanie Village.
Stephanie Village was once touted as a $200 million project that would sell condos at more than $300 a square foot. Construction in 2007 on the project's clubhouse was halted before completion. The building was demolished to make way for the WinCo store.
Read said the store will most likely open in early March, on the same day as its second Valley store at Decatur Boulevard and Interstate 215 in Las Vegas. For more information about the WinCo concept, visit wincofoods.com.
