A customer checks out produce options at the grand opening of the first Aldi store in Manhattan in East Harlem’s East River Plaza in 2012. Aldi Inc. plans to add six to eight new stores in West Virginia over the next five years as part of its expansion plan.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Discount grocery chain Aldi Inc. plans to open a new store in Hurricane’s Liberty Square later this year as executives hope to potentially double the number of Aldi stores in the state over the next five years.
Aldi executives signed a lease Monday to develop an 18,000 square foot section of the former Big Bear into a new Aldi store. It is slated to open sometime in December.
Russ White, regional director of real estate for Aldi, said the company hopes to open several more stores in the state in the coming years as part of an aggressive nationwide expansion.
Aldi, which was founded in Germany and began opening U.S. stores in the 1970s, currently has more than 1,300 stores in 32 states — mostly between Kansas and the East Coast. White said the company hopes to open between 600 to 650 new stores nationwide in the next five years.
“As a company, we’re growing at about 120 stores a year, give or take, over the next five years,” White said.
The company already operates seven stores in West Virginia. Right now it only has one store in the Kanawha Valley, a Dunbar location that opened in 1997.
White said he thinks the chain could open six to eight new stores in the state — not counting the Hurricane location — as part of the five-year expansion…