By Matt Kelly

Battleford liquor store ‘made sense’: Sobeys

Nov 24, 2016 | 4:00 PM

The mystery is over as Sobey’s was announced as the successful bidder to run the private liquor store in Battleford.

The SLGA liquor store is in Battleford is one of the 39 public stores being turned private and one of the 50 total new public stores in Saskatchewan. The grocery chain submitted the chosen request for proposal (RFP) to operate the incoming public liquor store in Battleford.

With nine of the 50 private stores to be run by Sobeys, Keri Scobie with Sobeys Western Canada said the company saw Battleford as a great opportunity.

“We’ve been in Saskatchewan for a couple of years now and customer responses to our stores and our offering have been tremendous. When the government was going through this process, we looked at the communities and where there was opportunity and Battleford was one that made sense to us,” she said.

Sobeys is now working through the next steps of the RFP process to begin operating and has 12 months to open the store. Scobie said the specific timeline of when the store will be opened and where the store will be located will come at a later date.

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“That’s still part of the next steps process for us. So we’re not actually able to share site specific information today but once we have all of those details finalized, we’ll be sharing that,” she said.

Mayor Ames Leslie said it’s an exciting moment to see the work get into motion on a private liquor store. 

“Definitely at this time as a community we’ll welcome Sobeys into our community as another business venture. I just think the council and I are just waiting to see where Sobeys intentions are to build the liquor store,” he said.

Ames added town council is looking to give its thoughts on where the store should be located but he admitted it’s out of their hands.

“I think we’ll probably at some point reach out and kind of help them understand the town’s wishes on where it should be but I think ultimately it is their (Sobeys) decision,” he said.
 

Matt Kelly is battlefordsNOW’s town municipal affairs and community reporter. He can be reached at mkelly@jpbg.ca or tweet him @mattjkelly2.