Walnut Grove's Fresh St. Market wins national gold for independent grocers
Fresh St. Market Walnut Grove took gold in the medium-store category and the B.C./Yukon regional award at the 2026 Canadian Independent Grocer of the Year Awards, the chain's first national award.
A juror walked through the Walnut Grove Fresh St. Market, checked everything from the parking lot to the tills, and scored it higher than any other mid-sized independent grocery store in the country.
The store at The Village at Thunderbird Centre won gold in the Medium Surface category at the 2026 Canadian Independent Grocer of the Year Awards, presented October 28 in Toronto by the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers (CFIG). It also took the B.C./Yukon regional award for medium stores. It’s the first national award for Fresh St. Market, a B.C. grocer with ten stores.
The name on the award is Charlie Lee, the Walnut Grove store leader. Lee started working at 10 in his family’s IGA in Fort Langley and has run the Walnut Grove location for 20 years, through its time as an IGA and its switch to a Fresh St. Market on October 22, 2022. “This award belongs to our 140 team members and to the Langley customers who’ve supported us for years,” he said in the company’s announcement.
How the award is judged
- Stores compete by size. Medium means 15,000 to 24,999 square feet; small and large stores have their own categories.
- A retail expert visits each store in person and scores fresh departments, the centre aisles, cleanliness, food safety, customer service and how fast the front end moves.
- Only CFIG members that have been open at least a year can enter.
According to the company, the juror singled out cross-merchandising in produce, meat and seafood (ingredients for a meal shelved together), the café and coffee bar, daily in-store baking, the full-service meat and seafood counter, sustainable seafood, energy-efficient heating, cooling and lighting, and infant-carrier carts.
Other B.C. stores on the list
Langley’s store was the only one in the Lower Mainland to win a category gold. Whistler’s Creekside Market took silver among small stores, PriceSmart Foods Lougheed in Burnaby took silver in specialty food, and Save-On-Foods Pine Centre in Prince George won the B.C./Yukon large-store regional award.
If you shop there
Fresh St. Market Walnut Grove is at B101-20159 88 Avenue and lists its hours as 7 am to 10 pm every day (604-882-8411). Two things a lot of regulars don’t know about: reusable bags can be borrowed for a $2.99 deposit and returned later, and surplus food that’s still good goes to local charities through FoodMesh.
Our grocery stores in Langley list has every other store by neighbourhood, and our Walnut Grove guide covers the rest of the area’s shops and services.