Feb. 26, 2019

Fareway opens its Tea grocery store Wednesday in the former Sunshine Foods building.

“It’s a little bit smaller than most Fareways, but customers will find our full-service meat counter and farm-fresh produce,” store manager Bryan Youngstrom said. And like all Fareways, employees will take groceries out to a customer’s car.

The Tea store is similar in size to the Fareway in Harrisburg, which opened in a new building in December 2017, Youngstrom said.

Lewis Drug will continue to operate a pharmacy in the store. Only a handful of the 120-plus grocery stores in the Iowa-based chains have pharmacies, Youngstrom said.

The store has four regular checkout lanes, a customer service/express line and one self-checkout station. The “Fast Lane” is a new feature that’s in only a handful of stores, said Youngstrom, who has worked for Fareway in Iowa for 17 years.

The store has a beer, wine and spirits section, and a warming case for roasted chicken.

Fareway announced in October that it was buying the Tea Sunshine Foods from Kyle and Deb Svanda. The store opened in 2006. Sunshine closed Feb. 2, and Fareway brought in crews to remodel the space, including building the traditional meat area at the back of the store. Brett Kelley is the manager of the meat department.

The store employs about 60 people, most of them in part-time positions, Youngstrom said. “Quite a few of the Sunshine folks stayed on.”

Hours are 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday.