Staying True – Western Grocer

Freson Bros. stays true to their roots, their brand, and the food their customers love with a brand-new store in Edmonton’s Glenora neighbourhood

By Carolyn Camilleri

The building that houses the new Freson Bros. store in Edmonton’s Glenora neighbourhood has an interesting connection to the founding family’s history. As Doug Lovsin, president of Freson Bros., explains, his mother and grandparents lived just seven streets away in the 1950s so the building was familiar. In 1962, his father had an opportunity to open a store in that building, but declined because he had just recently opened a store in Peace River and was moving his then-young family there.

Fast forward 60 years.

“We signed the deal in 2022 to get into that building, and our dad was alive at that point as well,” says Lovsin. “It was an interesting full circle for that place.”

Dad is Frank Lovsin, who founded the first store, a butcher shop, in 1955 in Hinton, Alberta. That first store was just 24 feet wide by 30 feet long with a power plant in the back. The Peace River store that opened in 1962 was the second location in a chain that continued to grow throughout Alberta. With the opening of the Glenora store on April 12, 2024, Alberta now has 20 Freson Bros. stores. Frank Lovsin’s three sons followed him into the business, with Doug Lovsin as president, Mike Lovsin as chairman, and Ken Lovsin as vice-president of IT.

The Glenora building first opened in 1959 as a food store and had gone through different ownership and usages over the years, including a Consumers’ Distributing and a fitness facility. Turning it into a modern food store required a full retrofit, a process Doug Lovsin says takes an average of two years — one for planning and one for building.

“It can take a decade to find the location, but once you’ve secured the location, it’s a couple years to go through planning and building, he says, adding: “We had to review everything — all mechanical, all electrical, all structural — that was all redesigned and re-engineered and completed.”

The new store came with a sizable planning challenge: they had to design to fit into a space half the size of their usual new builds.

“It’s a 20,000-square-foot building,” says Lovsin. “Our new build stores are 42,000, so this existing 20,000-square-foot location was obviously significantly smaller, half the size of what we build, but it gives us an opportunity to design a 20,000-square-foot footprint and add all of the amenities into the building that are important to our brand. We adjusted, we prioritized, and we ensured that the strength of our concept was retained, and the area that was shrunk the most would be centre store — that shrunk by two thirds.”

Shrinking centre store —aka the grocery department — works well for Freson Bros. and their focus, which is on food made and produced in Alberta.

“We’re a food store,” says Lovsin. “People like to say grocery store. Well, we’re not a grocery store. In fact, I can tell you what we don’t have. We don’t sell pet food. We don’t sell cleaning. We don’t sell laundry. We don’t sell paper products. We don’t sell health and beauty. We sell food.”

Consider, for example, the Freson Bros. legacy — the meat department.

“We only sell Alberta beef, Alberta pork, and Alberta chicken,” says Lovsin. “Right behind the service meat counter is a glass cooler and it’s showing 30 to 40 quarters of beef hanging there. We buy those from a local rancher. We have a specific breed and a specific size of beef that we work with.”

Freson Bros.’ renowned sausage, bacon, and jerky are all made and smoked in store using real hardwood. And every Freson Bros. store also has its own sourdough bakery, complete with a cinnamon bun station.

“Our bakers are fermentation bakers, so they understand the art of fermentation, and every fermented product has our mother dough in it,” he says. “We do not use yeast in our bakery.”

Local Alberta meats and cheese are the shining stars at the deli counter.

“We work with two cheese makers in Alberta, and they produce private label Alberta-made cheese,” says Lovsin.

A big highlight at the new store is the 120-seat Butcher’s Cookhouse restaurant with a covered patio and a license to sell beer and wine.

“We have, of course, our slow-roasted Alberta beef and pork combo meals. We have our grill station where we make our smash burgers and our steak sandwich. We have our stone oven that makes our sourdough thin-crust pizza. We have our hot buffet where we have hot buffet meals every week. We have our weekend brunch every Saturday and Sunday. And lastly, we have our made-to-order sandwich station with Alberta sourdough, Alberta meats, and Alberta cheese.”

Yes, it all fits beautifully into 20,000 square feet. There’s even a floral area and seven check-out lanes with real human cashiers. Freson Bros. stores don’t have self-checkouts. And here’s another interesting fact: there are no time clocks, a rarity in this business.

“The people who work with us do not check in and check out on a time clock,” he says. “We schedule staff and we trust that they’ll be in the store when they’re scheduled. We’re proud of everyone and the relationships we have are built on trust and respect.”

Lovsin says the response to the new store from the Glenora community has been wonderful.

“Something that we learned is that people are so happy that they now have their own store in their own neighbourhood — their own butcher, their own baker, their own coffee shop,” he says. “Yeah, they’re happy — extremely happy. We’re pleased to be their store and they love the food.”

Community engagement happens naturally in the Alberta communities Freson Bros. has stores.

“We just become a part of the community and we become their store, then the folks learn that we want to be a part of their events, whether they’re having a baseball tournament or a figure skating event or any type of a community fundraiser,” he says. “We participate, and not only participate, but our people also become a part of these community groups.”

As a final note, Lovsin makes a point of recognizing the Freson Bros. leadership team, in particular Kerry Waldo, who is managing partner.

“I also want to recognize our entire operations team for the wonderful work that they did in setting up and opening the store,” he says. “In addition to that, the 180 people that we employed to work in our departments.”

Asked about future plans, Lovsin says there is more to come from Freson Bros.