A solitary supermarket within a one-hour drive radius is getting a glow-up.
Four Square Murchison’s Fairfax St building was originally built in the 1890s and has always delivered the goods as a grocer in the Tasman town, with the Foodstuffs brand operating within the walls for around three decades.
Janelle Hocking has owned the business with husband Kim, and her in-laws Richard and Elizabeth for 11 years, and says there was a double whammy with the current premises “well outgrown”, impossible to get two trolleys down an aisle, and earthquake prone.
“We were over time for a basic refit, new shelving, new refrigeration, it was time to freshen up and give the locals a better shopping experience,” she says.
“It gets to the point where you cannot hold enough stock to get you between deliveries, which is a little bit of an issue, so we needed a larger store so we could hold the right amount of stock.
“It's definitely something that's been on our radar for probably the last four or five years, particularly through the summer season because we're very seasonal with a lot of travellers.”
Janelle says Foodstuffs was in sync with plans for a revamped Murchison store based on the building’s age, and the supermarket giant says the co-op received resource consent for the new store, expected to be double the size, in August 2024 with the first sod turned on 19 November.
Waimea Weekly understands Foodstuffs purchased the site for the new build on the Fairfax and Waller St corner in September 2023 after demolition commenced for the site’s previous holder, Commercial Hotel and Cafe.
Janelle says Scott Construction, alongside local Murchison and regional contractors, were developing the project which was “slightly ahead of schedule”.
She says timber offcuts had been donated to Murchison Area School for its technology classes, and excitement is also building within the community and among the 14 staff members on the books.
“Murchison winters can get very cold, and [the current] old building is very hard to heat, so they're really looking forward to [the new store],” she says.
“[The current staff room] is also shared with the biscuit storage, it's very much a one-person-at-a-time staff room, so the staff are looking forward to having a decent staff room as well.
“[The new store] will have all the bells and whistles you'd expect a modern supermarket to have, like the self-checkouts, walk-in beer chillers, obviously not quite on the scale of a New World, but just a splash.”
Foodstuffs South Island head of property Steven Mitchell says the store is on track to open in time for the 2025-2026 summer holiday period.
