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This is no exaggeration-- several hundred people were in attendance for Shopko's ribbon cutting and grand opening Friday, October 24 in North Branch. Don't ever let anyone tell you advertising doesn't work.

Most of the North Branch City Council was on-hand to officially welcome the retailer to the city. North Branch Chamber of Commerce President Lorraine Moeller made some brief remarks and Mayor Gloria Karsky said having the major retailer in town creates jobs and will keep shopping dollars at home. Shopko, she added, will help North Branch survive.

The North Branch store was the fifth of six new sites the company has announced it is opening in 2008.

The North Branch operation currently employs 133 persons and to demonstrate its belief in good corporate citizenship, Shopko's first donation in this region was to the Santa Anonymous program of $2,500.

Shopko's been around since 1961, but even though it was affiliated with SUPERVALU Inc., a Minneapolis-based grocery wholesaler, it hasn't had a presence in Minnesota.

Stores have been in Michigan, Montana, Idaho, Wisconsin, with a store to open in 2009 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. There are distribution centers in Omaha, Nebraska and Boise, Idaho and corporate headquarters (open 1988) are in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Shopko was spun-off from SUPERVALU in 1991 and became an independent publicly held company on an IPO of 32 million shares. By 1997 Shopko re-purchased 8.2 million shares from SUPERVALU and was organized as an independent corporation. In 1999 Shopko acquired Pamida Holding Co. which had 148 discount retail stores. By this time Shopko had 130-plus stores itself. Stores currently number 138.

Shopko Stores Inc. is no longer a publicly-held company, an affiliate of Sun Capital Partners Inc. acquired Shopko in 2005.

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