Mi Pueblo has grand opening
Mi Pueblo grocery store is shown with some of the crowds that attended the
store's grand opening seen in the foreground.
By Henrietta J. Burroughs
East Palo Alto Today
Posted November 16, 2009
The Mi Pueblo grocery store held a spectacular grand opening in its new location in the Ravenswood 101 Shopping Center.
The store, which opened its doors to shoppers on Saturday, November 14 at 7 a.m. , later had an official opening with a ribbon cutting ceremony at 11 a.m.
Mi Pueblo is now East Palo Alto’s largest and only supermarket. Juvenal Chavez, the CEO of Mi Pueblo, said, “We’re showing that East Palo Alto is the place to be. Things are changing. People who have never been in East Palo Alto are now coming to the city.”
Indeed, some people came from more than 30 miles away to shop at the store on its opening day. Throughout the Ravenswood 101 Shopping Center, parking places were few and hard to find.
Hundreds of people congregated outside of the store listening to music and participating in other kinds of entertainment.
The aisles in the huge store were filled with so many people that they were barely passable and the lines to the stores’ many checkout counters were, in some cases more than 20 people long.
If crowding inside the store was a problem, the traffic outside the store was hardly any better with cars almost at a standstill on the major thoroughfares leading into the Ravenswood 101 complex.
Needless to say, those who attended the opening were there because they wanted to be there and all of the crowding, waiting and traffic didn’t seem to matter.
See earlier article Mi Pueblo supermarket approved.
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