Grocery Outlet opened its newest San Francisco location Thursday on the edge of North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf, ahead of the company’s 80th anniversary this weekend.

Mayor Daniel Lurie held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday for the official opening of the new Grocery Outlet at 350 Bay Street, as KPIX reports. The store is independently owned and operated by Jacqueline and Joel Lanoie, who noted that Grocery Outlet was founded in San Francisco, and the company's 80th anniversary is this weekend.

“Our focus is delivering affordable groceries for our customers,” Joel Lanoie said, speaking to KPIX.

The new 30,000-square-foot Grocery Outlet fills the long-vacant space left behind when Safeway closed in 2023, leaving the neighborhood without a full-service grocery store.

“For many families, food has been difficult without a full-scale grocery store these past three years since the Safeway closed in 2023,” Lurie said Thursday.

With Trader Joe’s located across the street from Grocery Outlet, the two stores fill many of the gaps in service, but KPIX notes that neither is a full-service supermarket on the scale of the Safeway that previously occupied the site.

The NorthPoint Centre Mall, where the new Grocery Outlet is located, went up for sale in 2023 soon after Safeway closed, which was eventually purchased for $25.76 million, along with the connected NorthPoint Vistas apartment building, by San Jose-based Anchor Pacific Capital, which partnered with an unnamed family firm on the deal. APC’s Anton Qiu said at the time that the company planned to take a long-term approach to the property.

“It needs a lot of work, but we’re willing to put in more capital to make it work,” Qiu said.

In September 2024, Grocery Outlet was officially announced as the new tenant, and after nearly two years of construction, the store finally opened its doors Thursday.

Be advised before you go — many Grocery Outlet locations are equipped with facial recognition software that scans customers faces at its entrances.

Previously: A New Grocery Store Likely to Replace Former Safeway Near Fisherman's Wharf

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