How to resolve AdBlock issue? BALLSTON SPA — The Hannaford Brothers Company recently opened its 50th Hannaford Supermarket location in New York last week on Saturday, Nov. 9 at 7 a.m. The new store is located on Via Rossi Way in Ballston Spa.
According to the official media advisory, the new store is 39,000 square feet and “features a full-service kitchen department, offering an expanded selection of hot foods and meal solutions, as well as hand-crafted sandwiches and salads made on-site daily.”
Additionally, a press release given out during a media event the day before the store officially opened stated that the store will employ “approximately 125 full- and part-time associates.”
The press release also said that during the first day the store was open, the first 500 customers received “a Hannaford gift card randomly valued between $5 and $500,” and that customers also had “giveaways, kids’ activities and samples from local producers and new Hannaford kitchen items.”
In the days leading up to the store’s opening, several coupons were given out to nearby residents as incentive to shop at the store.
At the same media event, Brian Fabre, Community Relations Specialist for Hannaford Supermarkets, and Wendy Watson, the new store’s manager, presented a $10,000 check to Ken Slentz, superintendent of the Ballston Spa school district.
The check will be going to the school district’s Backpack Program which “provides students in need with bags of child-friendly, nutritious food for times when other resources are not available, such as weekends; as well as its Community Literacy Campaign, which seeks to ensure that all students are able to read at or above grade level,” according to the press release.
In response to Fabre and Watson presenting the check, Slentz said “from the district’s perspective, a $10,000 donation to these two critical programs, we just can’t say enough about that.”
On a tour of the store, Watson said that the produce section had fresh choices daily, and that as a new section they had a “Snack Pals” area, which she said was to help parents pick up snacks for their children more easily.
Behind the produce and various sweets, another new feature the store has is the hot foods bar. Watson said that the food was not prepackaged. Instead, there were fresh meals, with the same thing daily so that anyone interested will know what is available. Fabre added, “hopefully, this’ll be the wave of the future.”
On the other side of the store, around the likes of shaving needs and near the pharmacy, there is a small kids’ area, where many of the child-specific products are kept. Watson explained that it looks like a play area, and even includes a height ruler. She said “everything is to make it fun.”
She jokingly said “they did tell me that when they put this in another store, it was actually lower, and they had to make it higher because kids were actually trying to play with the jungle gym.”
Some of the store’s other features are two drive thru lanes, one for the pharmacy and the other for Hannaford-to-go, a service which allows people to place orders then simply pick them up at the store, and a café with free Wifi and which Watson said is totally new and she hopes groups come in. Fabre also said that “we hope it will serve as a community gathering space.”
Slentz said that of the approximately 125 store associates, 15 of them are currently students in the Ballston Spa school district.
For more information, visit the Hannaford Supermarket website at www.hannaford.com.
