By John Sharp
The completely remodeled Ball’s Price Chopper at 8430 Wornall Rd. which now looks like an entirely new store inside had its “soft” reopening at 8 a.m. December 8 after being closed since April.
“We’re very excited to bring a totally updated first class grocery store to the neighborhood,” said David Ball, president of Ball’s Food Stores, “and our teammates are very excited that they will have one of the best grocery stores in the city to work in.”
All the 36,000 square foot store’s old display cases for refrigerated and frozen food have been replaced with new energy-efficient ones, and the store now has all LED lighting.
The store’s expanded shopping areas now feature a much larger bakery and an expanded deli that carries more cheeses, hot foods such as baked and fried chicken cooked in-house, meats smoked in-house, premade salads, sandwiches and sushi, said Scott Bayne, vice president of sales & marketing for Ball’s Food Stores.
There is a self-checkout in the bakery-deli area, he said, so customers can quickly checkout without waiting in potentially longer lines of grocery shoppers, and a new in-house seating area for customers who want to eat their food on site has been added in the front of the store.
Ball noted the like-new store also has larger produce and meat departments. He said the produce department has expanded the amount of organic products it offers, and his company buys much of its produce from over 150 local farmers.
He said the store’s certified meat cutters can cut meat to order for customers, and they grind meat several times a day for it to be as fresh as possible so the store does not have to rely on selling all pre-packaged meat as many competitors’ stores do today.
Bayne said the store also has an expanded Harry’s Liquor area with more fine wines, carries refrigerated fresh pet food and offers fresh cut flowers.
For customer convenience the store has new large and small plastic grocery carts, six self-checkouts for groceries in addition to the one in the bakery-deli area, and public restrooms have been moved to the front of the store. Curbside pickup is available, or persons can place their orders online and have them delivered to their homes the same day.
The store is continuing to offer pharmacy services including COVID-19 vaccinations, booster shots and flu shots.
The store’s salad bar has not been installed yet due to supply chain delays, but Bayne said it is expected to arrive sometime in January when the store will have a formal grand reopening.
The store will be open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, and its pharmacy will be open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and will be closed on Sunday.