Face lift continues at Spring Hill store

Tampa-based grocery chain Kash n' Karry hopes to complete expansion of the store by August.

By KATHERINE BLOK

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 8, 2000

SPRING HILL -- Kash n' Karry supermarket at Northcliffe and Mariner boulevards is expanding as part of its parent company's effort to modernize the grocery chain throughout Florida.

Once a Food Lion, the store was converted to a Kash n' Karry along with about 50 other Food Lions late last summer, Kash n' Karry spokeswoman Tawn Earnest said.

The conversion and expansion of the store at Mariner and Northcliffe and others is part of the company's ongoing remodeling program, Earnest said. The old Food Lion stores were smaller than most Kash n' Karry stores, which is the reason behind the expansion, she said. The two grocery chains merged under the name Delhaize America after the Salisbury, N.C.-based Food Lion bought Kash n' Karry in 1996.

The majority of Food Lion stores in Florida have been converted to Kash n' Karry stores because the "Kash n' Karry format has been successful and well-received in the Florida format," Earnest said. "The Food Lion format has not been as well established as the Kash n' Karry brand."

The store will expand to 42,922 square feet, making the store 9,922 square feet larger, Kash n' Karry spokeswoman Wendy Melton said. The main grocery store will receive a face lift, while a liquor and drug store will move in next door into a space vacated by another store, she said.

Construction at the Mariner and Northcliffe store should be completed by August, Melton said.

Delhaize America has no immediate plans to open any new stores in Hernando County, Earnest said. The closing of the Kash n' Karry in Brooksville within the past year left Hernando without any Kash n' Karry or Food Lion stores east of Mariner Boulevard. But Earnest said the Brooksville store had a limited presence in the market and that the company is now focusing on expanding its existing stores and building new stores in the Orlando area.

Delhaize America decided about a year ago to use Kash n' Karry stores as the "growth vehicle" for the company in Florida because the store has been so well accepted, Earnest said. Of the 142 Kash n' Karry stores in the state, about 80 are in the Tampa Bay area, she said, mostly because the chain was founded more than 50 years ago in Tampa.

The Tampa area "is our back yard. It's just been where the company has done its best," Earnest said. Kash n' Karry has "been a part of the community for so long, people recognize the name (and) it's been easier for the company to open up new stores. . . . The company is expanding beyond those borders, but (the Tampa area is) still its home territory."

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