Manager Tom Lowe says Togiak Bay Supply is the only Omni grocery store to reopen without lapse.
Over the past few weeks, Omni-owned grocery stores all over Alaska have closed. Dillingham’s N&N is slated to re-open under new joint ownership April 6th. Meanwhile, the Togiak store made an especially quick comeback.
Audio transcript below:
Omni closed its Togiak Trading Depot on March 23rd. The next day longtime manager Tom Lowe re-opened the newly named Togiak Bay Supply store under his new business license.
Lowe believes his store is the only former Omni grocery store to re-open without a gap in hours of operation or employment.
“It’s been going good. We were able to not have to lay anybody off, or have any lapse in payroll. So that’s been a nice smooth transition for the employees.”
Unlike other locations, the Togiak store did not have a liquidation sale. Lowe says he currently has about 75% of his pre-closure inventory, and is rapidly stocking up.
“Basically just wanting to get stock back in here, get sales back up. We got a fishing season coming up, and we want to be prepared for that, have all our vendors lined up, and supplies for the fishermen.”
Lowe says that besides a few cosmetic improvements, he has only tentative plans to change the way the store runs.
“The store has always had its clientele, had its piece of the market, so we’re not planning on doing much in changes. Hopefully some improvements… I’ve got a couple tricks in my bag. I used to be a butcher for Albertson’s for a long time, so there may be some opportunities there down the road.”
Lowe and his employees have been busy taking in big shipments of inventory of the past couple days.
The former Omni-owned grocery store in Dillingham is slated to re-open Monday, April 6th. That’s according to a press release today from UCI, one of the new owners of N&N Properties. UCI will also open a store in the Old Swanson location in Bethel starting April 15th.
Contact the author at hannah@kdlg.org.