Oct. 8, 2018

Fareway Stores Inc. is buying Sunshine Foods in Tea.

The town’s only grocery store opened in 2006. Owners Kyle and Deb Svanda were part of the original ownership group and bought out their partners in January 2014. Both of them work full-time in the store.

Inventory has been dropping in recent weeks, and the shelves will become even more bare.

“We are going to keep seasonally relevant items on hand until the transition is complete,” Kyle Svanda said. “Fareway has requested that I completely sell out of my inventory, but we’ll keep a limited selection of items on the shelves until the transition is complete.”

Pending all necessary governmental approvals, Fareway hopes to begin its renovation within the next several months while the store remains open. Once Fareway takes ownership of the property, it is anticipated that the store will need to be closed for a couple of weeks to finish the remodel. The remodel is expected to be complete by early 2019.

Iowa-based Fareway has been expanding its presence in the Sioux Falls area in the past few years. The company opened its first store in the city in 2013, filling a vacant space in a retail center on West 41st Street. Fareway built a second location at 41st Street and Sycamore Avenue in 2016 and expanded to a new building in Harrisburg in December 2017.

The family-owned business has more than 120 stores in Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska and Illinois, and employs more than 11,000 workers.

“We are pleased to announce our plans to expand in South Dakota,” Fareway president and CEO Reynolds W. Cramer said in a statement.

“While residents of Tea may be familiar with our stores in Sioux Falls, we look forward to serving residents locally and becoming ingrained in the Tea community.”

Svanda would not comment on which side initiated the sale.

“As for what’s next, I really haven’t had time to think about that yet,” he said. “It’s a little scary.”

He has worked in the grocery business for about 25 years with earlier stints at Hy-Vee and the Canton Food Center, which became a Sunshine Foods.