Sham T
Google
Before 2000 this was a Loblaws. When Loblaws Mavis & Dundas (now Superstore) and Loblaws Heartland opened this was changed to a Nofrills so it's a big store, probably around 55k sqft. Daniel's been the owner since 2003. Its about the same size as Tomken & Rathburn and a bit bigger than Britannia & Creditview Nofrills which were also Loblaws.
It's got a pharmacy (with two benches for waiting), seafood counter, butcher/meat counter, tiny display of flowers (it was much bigger years ago), an aisle for natural/organics grocery & frozen, an aisle for home goods, a small seasonal section that currently has BBQ/summer, a PC Bank with an ATM. There's probably 20-30ft of beer in aisle 9.
There's 3.5 aisles of health, beauty and baby, 9 grocery aisles with 4 extra wide aisles for pallet displays. The last aisle is frozen, extra wide with frozen and dairy bunkers. It has a lot of ethnic stuff, but like other Nofrills the groceries are all mixed in and hard to find. Before the renovation I remember it was one extra wide aisle with displays for ethnic groceries, it was great.
Dairy and most of the Frozen ethnic is together and there's quite a bit both behind doors and in the bunkers.
There are two odd spots. There's produce tables all along the deli/cheese wall. 2 carts cannot fit, even one cart is a tight fit and cuz there aren't many breaks in the tables, you gotta walk around. The front frozen wall next to the PC Bank are hidden by a row of pallet displays and a 30ft section of shelves. Not much space here either for multiple shoppers. They could just kill the PC Bank and space out the displays making it easier to get around. Other stores just have the ATM and what real banking can you do in person with PC? its all done online or on the phone, dude is there just to sign you up for a card. The PC Bank walls would be perfect for the random 30ft shelves.
At 4pm on a Thursday it was quite busy. It has 10 checkouts with only 4 being staffed and the lines were pretty long. There's 8 self checkouts with restrictions, no carts, 15 items or less, no cash. Only way out if you're just stopping at the pharmacy is through the self checkout area. Shopping carts in the parking lot don't look maintained with cart's well overflowing out of the corrals.
The parking lot itself is a disaster, always cars stopped at the entrance to the store. Today on both sides, with a line up of cars trying to get into the lot fully blocked and a long line of cars trying to leave the lot.
The store was last renovated 2018/2019. Almost all of the refrigeration is open whereas the newly renovated stores have doors to save energy. It does have the latest paint job and signage so it doesn't feel old for a 25 year old store.
Is the frustration of parking, long checkout lines and scouring for ethnic food worth it? If you want cheap groceries then it probably is cuz there's nothing else around... other than Heartland Walmart. Price Chopper in the area died before it had the chance to become a FreshCo and Food Basics turned into Oceans.