Hy-Vee for years has expanded around the Midwest with stores it designed and built. But on Tuesday, it will take the rare step of opening a store in a former grocery.
Hy-Vee will become the third supermarket to occupy the space at 16705 County Road 24 in Plymouth — first the site of a Rainbow store and then a Cub Foods.
Cub's parent company Supervalu, which earlier this month became a unit of United Natural Foods Inc., closed the store in July. Hy-Vee announced soon after that it was taking over after a remodel.
The new store opens at 6 a.m. Tuesday and will then be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The store will be the 10th and smallest Hy-Vee in the Twin Cities. It has 56,000 square feet of space while the nine others range from 86,000 to 101,000 square feet.
"It's a size that we haven't done for a long time," Randy Edeker, chief executive of West Des Moines-based Hy-Vee, said. "Sometimes the greatest ideas come when you're forced to be creative. You have a box that's only this big."
Hy-Vee is also opening Hy-Vee Wine and Spirits, which took the place of Cellars Wine & Spirits that closed last month in an adjacent center.
Hy-Vee has hired 250 employees, including 100 full-time, for the Plymouth store. It will eventually employ 400.
Crews remodeled the site to include several elements that are typical of Hy-Vee, including a Starbucks, mother's rooms, pharmacy, individual bathrooms and self-checkout lanes.