Gordon Food Service posts at its Jacksonville grocery store that it will hold a grand opening at 7 a.m. Oct. 25.
Workers were busying setting up and training inside the store Oct. 24 at 5800 Beach Blvd. at southwest Beach and University boulevards.
The Wyoming, Michigan-based privately held and family-managed food service distributor has leased and remodeled a former Staples store.
With operations in the U.S. and Canada, Gordon Food Service serves local restaurants, food operations and the public.
It has a sign on the outside wall that it is hiring. It directs applicants to GFS.com/careers. Three Jacksonville jobs are for district sales representative and part-time van delivery driver and part-time cooler associate.
The company said in news release Oct. 25 that the store will employ about 40 full and part-time workers.
The store hours are 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. It is closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day and Easter.
The more than 125-year-old company reports $21 billion in annual sales and 22,000 employees. It says it is the largest privately held food service distributor in North America.
Gordon Food Service said in July it has more than 175 stores. It operates in 13 states, according to its website. Most of its stores are in the Midwest.
There is no membership required. There is a free loyalty program for business owners where they earn points on their purchases that can be spent like cash on future transactions.
Its stores are open to the public, with more than 5,000 items per store.
Products include 17 private brands, seven specialty companies and more than 420,000 private and national brand products, including local products from every region.
It says there are 6,300 suppliers in its supply chain.
It’s a fifth-generation company, “We’ve grown to become the largest family-operated broad-line food distribution company in North America by upholding the same business approach since 1987 – being passionately committed to the people we serve.”
The Jacksonville store
The city issued a permit March 5, 2024, to convert the former Staples store into a Gordon Food Service Store and delivery service.
Schmid Construction Inc. of Winter Garden renovated the 28,721-square-foot store at a project cost of $3.59 million. It includes grocery and food preparation space.
It came after the city issued a permit Nov. 21, 2023, for Ticon Inc. to remove the building’s interior finishes.
Fishbeck Engineers Architects Scientists Constructors of Grand Rapids, Michigan, is the consultant.
The building is in the Boulevard Corners Shopping Center, which is owned by 116 W Flagler Street LLC of Miami.
Plans showed wall and center freezers; popcorn and rotisserie rooms and a future tortilla room; general sales; fresh meat and dairy coolers; and meat, produce and produce coolers.
There are van delivery and receiving areas in the back as well as a back-room area.
The store website shows that in-store features include online ordering and in-store pickup; home and business ordering; Instacart; fresh meat, produce and squeezed juice; ready-to-eat meals; popcorn; and the Gordon GO free wholesale membership program designed for businesses and organizations.
The store opening returns groceries to the corner, where Albertsons operated decades ago in another part of the shopping center.
The store will be the first in Northeast Florida for Gordon Food Service, which is based near Grand Rapids.
It offers membership services, but customers are not required to be a member and no membership fee is needed to shop at Gordon Food Service, which operates similarly to wholesale clubs.
“Gordon Food Service Store carries thousands of the most popular Gordon Food Service products at wholesale prices. The stores are open to the public seven days a week and do not require a membership fee,” says the GFSstore.com site.
It distributes to restaurants; health care facilities; universities; camps; and other food-service operations, which may qualify to receive truck deliveries based on their product order size
In October 2023, Colliers Senior Vice President Gary Montour said Gordon Food Service probably will open in the fourth quarter of 2024.
He represented the Boulevard Corners landlord in the lease. He said Atlantic Retail of Miami represented Gordon Food Service in the deal.
A decade ago, plans showed that Gordon Food Service intended to open an almost 16,000-square-foot GFS Marketplace at 13423 Beach Blvd. The store wasn’t built and the developer sold the property to AD Development LLC of Jacksonville Beach for a strip retail center.
The company
Gordon Food Service has 14 distribution centers, including in Miami and Plant City, to serve restaurants, health care, schools and other customers that serve groups of consumers.
The GFSstore.com site says that privately owned Gordon Food Service, in operation for more than 125 years, serves the Midwest, Northeast, Southeast and Southwest regions of the United States and coast-to-coast in Canada.
In a Nov. 14, 2023, news release about the opening of the remodeled store in Trottwood, Ohio, Gordon Food Service said it serves local restaurants, food operations and the public.
The newly located Trotwood store “marks a momentous expansion, growing its facility from 15,000 to 52,000 square feet.”
Primarily designed to provide chef-quality food products to restaurant owners and food service professionals, the store will also cater to home shoppers with an assortment of packaged and fresh produce and goods, the release said.
“Gordon Food Service Store believes in the power of good food and its ability to bring people together and make moments special,” said Tim Grabar, president, Gordon Food Service Store.
Local shoppers can expect to find:
• Large seasonal produce department.
• Meal solutions for shoppers looking for a quick dinner or for a holiday get-together with friends and family.
• Wholesale walk-in customer coolers housing cases of meats, and dairy items.
• Grab & Go meal solutions with an assortment of ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat items like rotisserie and fried chicken, ribs, deli sandwiches, cut fruit and freshly squeezed juices.
• Gourmet fresh-popped popcorn.
• Gordon Go!, a free wholesale loyalty program available to businesses and nonprofit customers to earn points that can be spent like cash or redeemed for $1,000 checks.
• Convenient online ordering for same-day in-store pickup.
Customers can learn more and register to receive emails at gfsstore.com/signup/.
“Beginning as a simple butter-and-egg delivery service, we’ve grown to become the largest family-operated broadline food distribution company in North America. Our first store location opened in Wyoming, Mich., in 1979 for restaurants that ran out of products between deliveries,” the news release said.
