Safeway store on Henderson Highway to close in November

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This article was published 14/10/2015 (3664 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Another local Safeway store is about to bite the dust.

A Sobeys West spokesperson confirmed Wednesday the store at 731 Henderson Hwy. (at Bronx Avenue) will close Nov. 10.

Keri Scobie said the store’s 55 employees were told of the pending closure Tuesday.

“We’re working at relocating all the employees to comparable roles within our store network in the city,” she said.

She noted all of the prescriptions in the store’s pharmacy will be transferred to the Sobeys store at 965 Henderson Hwy.

The Henderson Highway outlet will be the fifth Manitoba Safeway store to close since June 2013, when Nova Scotia-based Sobeys acquired Canada Safeway and its 213 stores for $5.8 billion. The other four included two stores in Winnipeg and one each in Brandon and Steinbach.

In addition to the five closures, another four Winnipeg Safeway stores were sold last year to Red River Co-op, which later reopened them as Co-op grocery stores.

The closure of the Henderson Highway store will leave Safeway with 18 stores in Winnipeg and one each in Brandon, Neepawa, Dauphin, Thompson and Selkirk.

The president of the union that represents Safeway workers in Manitoba — Local 832 of the United Food and Commercial Workers — said most of the Henderson Highway store’s employees weren’t surprised to hear the store would be closing because it hasn’t been performing as well as some of the other Safeway stores in the city.

“But it’s still a shock whenever you are told your place of employment is closing,” Jeff Traeger said.

He said because there are still 18 other Safeway stores in Winnipeg and a fairly high employee turnover rate within the industry, the union expects all of the workers will be offered jobs elsewhere within Safeway’s local retail network. Whether they take them will likely depend on how far away it is from their home.

Scobie didn’t say why the Henderson Highway store, which opened in 1964, was targeted for closure. But she noted store closures “are a regular part of our business,” and Sobeys announced in June of last year it would be closing approximately 50 stores in Canada, including a handful of Safeway outlets in Western Canada.

“These are always tough decisions (because of) the impact on employees and customers,” she said.

“But… when we looked at a variety of factors, it made sense to close this store.”

Asked if there are plans to close any more Manitoba stores, Scobie said, “There’s nothing else I’m aware of… at the present time.”

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca