WinCo opens fourth Clark County store

Opening day filled with customers – and a few protestors

BY MAT BOES of the VBJ

Vancouver food shoppers stepping out into a refreshingly warm, dry Monday morning this week encountered yet another national-chain option.

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WinCo Foods LLC, headquartered in Boise, Idaho, opened its fourth Clark County supermarket with the debut of a 94,000-square-foot grid of shelves filled with bulk goods, novelties and, according to WinCo executive Michael Read, some of the lowest prices in town.

Although there was no easy way to verify such claims, WinCo seemed a popular destination on its opening day, with the parking lot at the 11310 N.E. 119th St. location full of cars and its aisles packed with shoppers during a visit to the store on Monday.

And given an unemployment rate hovering over 13 percent in Clark County, the new supermarket understandably attracted a lot of attention from job-seekers as well. According to Read, over 4,000 people applied for WinCo's 100 open positions.

Though store manager Mark Groves said the community had been welcoming to the new location, not everyone on opening day seemed enthused at the arrival of the latest WinCo.

On the sidewalk, about a dozen people, waving handwritten signs protested what they called the store's questionable practices regarding its employees. One
of the protestors, Lucy Carrier of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 in Portland, said the gathering hoped to get the word out to customers about wage and retirement benefit issues at WinCo.

Read could not be reached for comment on the allegations made by protestors at the store by press time.

Away from the protests, WinCo greeters handed out aisle directories to customers, complete with an alphabetical list of commonly bought goods and a map showing where to find them in the store.

Customers should be warned to bring checks, cash or debit cards with them; credit cards aren't accepted as payment at WinCo, a step Read says keeps costs down.

WinCo, founded in 1967 under the name, Waremart, employs over 13,000 workers across six states in the western U.S.

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