Store Expansion News: April update
Retailers and restaurants alike made headlines in April with store expansions and new formats.
Here are the major stories as reported by Chain Store Age, starting with the most recent.
- Chicken Salad Chick hits 300 locations as expansion continues The fast-casual chicken salad chain opened its 300th restaurant with a new location in Melbourne, Fla., a city on the state’s Atlantic coast. The opening follows robust growth for Chicken Salad Chicken, which opened 37 new locations in 2024, followed by 21 so far in 2025.
- Big Lots to reopen 132 stores in May — here are the locations The discounter will reopen 132 stores across 14 states in May, with the first wave on May 1 and a second on May 15. North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania lead the list with the most reopenings.
- Lidl expanding in NYC The discount grocer will open a new store in Brooklyn on May 23. Earlier this year, Lidl opened an outpost at the Gateway Center, a shopping center in the borough. The grocer is preparing a new store in a mixed-use complex in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, and another on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
- T&T Supermarket to open first SoCal store in 2026 Canada’s largest Asian grocer has announced that it will open its first Southern California store in winter 2026. The 34,000-sq.-ft. T&T store will be located within an upcoming retail development, known as The Canopy, in the master-planned Great Park community in Irvine.
- Aldi enters Nevada with first Las Vegas stores — more in the works The fast-growing discount grocer has opened its first two stores in the Las Vegas area, with more on the way. The stores in Henderson and North Las Vegas mark a milestone for Aldi as it aims to open more than 220 new stores this year, with the ultimate goal of opening 800 new locations by the end of 2028.
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- Smoothie King expansion on track with strong Q1 growth The smoothie chain recently shared a business update for the first quarter of 2025, highlighted by 13 new store openings and 20 new store commitments added to its development pipeline. Of the new stores, seven of them are in Smoothie King’s home state of Texas.
- Whole Foods Market expanding Daily Shop store concept — here’s where and when The natural and organic food grocer will open two small-format Daily Shop locations in the Manhattan borough of New York City. The first, a 10,000-sq.-ft. store in the East Village’s StuyTown development, will open May 14. The second location, an 8,500-sq.-ft. store in Hell’s Kitchen, will open on June 4.
- Barnes & Noble to open 60-plus stores in 2025 — including these four in April The bookseller expects to open more than 60 new bookstores in 2025. Barnes & Noble said it is experiencing strong sales at its existing stores and has been opening new stores after more than 15 years of declining store numbers. In 2024, the company opened 57 stores — more than it had in the whole decade from 2009 to 2019.
- Capriotti’s is expanding – here’s where The Las Vegas-based sandwich chain has been opening in new markets across the country as part of its goal to reach over 750 locations by 2032. New Capriotti’s locations can be found in California, Idaho, Alabama, Texas and New Jersey.
- Sam’s Club in big store remodeling and expansion move The Walmart-owned, membership warehouse club retailer plans to remodel all of its approximately 600 locations across the country as a "strategic growth investment," Sam’s Club CEO Chris Nicholas said at Walmart’s annual investor day. The company in January 2023 said it planned to open more than 30 new clubs across the United States during the next several years, but it now expects to build a pipeline to 15 new clubs every year after that for the foreseeable future.
- PopUp Bagels plans 35 SoCal stores Westport, Conn.-based PopUp Bagels has signed agreements with James Marzouk of Sweetzer Capital to open 25 locations in Los Angeles and Orange County, and with Paul Goodman and Griffin Thall (known as The Bagel Boyz), to open 10 locations in San Diego County over the next several years. PopUp Bagels currently operates 12 locations across Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York, with plans to reach 25 stores open by the end of the year.
- CardVault by Tom Brady to open at American Dream Sports card and memorabilia retailer CardVault by Tom Brady opened a flagship location at the East Rutherford, N.J. retail and entertainment center on April 11. The new store marked the fourth location for the retailer.
