ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Wednesday, January 31, 1996            TAG: 9601310031
SECTION: BUSINESS                 PAGE: B8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER 

WAREHOUSE SUPERMARKET TO OPEN BY VALLEY VIEW

Roanoke's first warehouse grocery store is scheduled to open near Valley View Mall early this summer.

Norfolk-based Farm Fresh Inc. plans to have its Roanoke Rack & Sack discount food store in business by June, said Farm Fresh Vice Chairman Keith Alessi.

The store will occupy the 80,000-square-foot Hechinger building, which Farm Fresh is leasing from that Landover, Md.-based company. Hechinger closed its home and garden supply center late last summer but still owns the building and holds a long-term lease on the property, which is managed by Faison Associates of Charlotte, N.C.

The new Valley View store will be three stores in one, Alessi said. It will include a Rack & Sack warehouse, a no-frills store that will sell groceries at discount prices; a Farm Fresh market, which will offer produce, meat, dairy and deli products; and a Drug Emporium discount drugstore and pharmacy.

The store will employ 100 to 150 people, Alessi said.

Farm Fresh operates two of these "three-in-one" Rack & Sack stores, both in Richmond. It operates 11 other Rack & Sack warehouse grocery stores.

The Rack & Sack store represents the Norfolk company's second foray into the Roanoke grocery market. Until the early 1990s, Farm Fresh owned two small IGA stores, called Nick's Markets. The company sold the stores and left the area when it decided to concentrate on larger supermarkets, Alessi said.

"We liked what we saw in Roanoke," he said, "but it wasn't the direction we wanted to go in."

Alessi said the company sees Roanoke as a one- or two-store market, but plans for opening a second store remain far in the future.

Although a Wal-Mart Supercenter complete with a full grocery department opened just a week ago at Valley View, Alessi said Farm Fresh isn't worried about that competition.

Rack & Sack is primarily a discount food store, he said, not a general-merchandise discounter.

"And it doesn't matter where you go today, you have competition," he said.

Archie Fralin, a Kroger spokesman, said his company had been rather surprised to hear that Farm Fresh planned to open in the Hechinger space. Kroger operates nine stores in the Roanoke Valley, including one at Towne Square shopping center close to the site of the Rack & Sack. Kroger has competed with Rack & Sack in Harrisonburg and is prepared for the new store, Fralin said.

"We really don't foresee any changes in anything in particular," Fralin said.

Farm Fresh sales last year totaled $885 million, Alessi said. Powell, Ohio-based Drug Emporium reported sales of $730 million.

LENGTH: Medium:   58 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  WAYNE DEEL/Staff. The new three-stores-in-one center 
          will include no-frills, discount-price groceries; produce, meat, 
          dairy and deli products; and a discount drugstore and pharmacy, said
          Keith Alessi, vice chairman of Farm Fresh Inc. color.