The bulk grocery store Bigfoot in Dillingham has opened a new and smaller location downtown.
The new store won’t be selling large boxed goods like its mother store up Lake Rd, it will be more like a convenience store. Majority shareholder of the employee owned Bigfoot Darrell Jones says that the company plans on calling the new store Little Foot.
“They all seem to like that idea so I think it has inherited the Little Foot name," said Jones. "You’d had to get a separate business license so yeah, I guess this is going to be Little Foot.”
But Jones says the store will only be little in size, not in variety. Along with typical grocery products, Jones says customers will be able to find a little bit of everything.
“Whatever sells, you know. This week it was fans. I shipped up a bunch of fans this year and I think we are going to run out,” said Jones.
Sitting on the wooden studs of the unfinished floor of the new store location across from the police department downtown Jones says the main reason for the new store is to allow him to bring more fresh produce into Dillingham.
“We hopefully are going to be bring produce that you see on the shelves in the lower 48, the freshness of it, out to here," explained Jones. "That's the plan."
For the past few years, Bigfoot has been shipping in fresh produce every two weeks to their store up Lake Rd. Jones has always wanted to make shipments once a week but couldn’t justify the expense with the amount of freight they sold. Jones is hoping Little Foot will solve that problem.
“That’s the whole reason it was opened was to get the fresh produce in once a week," said Jones. "I needed to bump up the freight for that. You know, that’s 29,000 pounds a week I got to come up with.”
And Jones says it’s an added bonus if he can help keep the competition honest in the downtown market by offering lower prices. Little Foot will be accepting food stamps but will not have charge accounts like at Bigfoot.
The store is currently open, though employees were still stocking the shelves Wednesday afternoon. And Jones says the first shipment of that fresh produce won’t come in until June 22nd.
Contact Matt Martin at (907)-842-2200 or matt@kdlg.org.