Nugget Market and its ‘affordable, artisan groceries’ coming to Rocklin

Nugget Market’s top executive hopes a first mover advantage will help pave the way for the success of its newest store, scheduled to open in Whitney Ranch in Rocklin in early 2024.

Nugget will be the anchor tenant of a 20-acre Placer County shopping center that will be built at the at the intersection of Whitney Ranch Parkway and University Avenue. The store is expected to employ 150 persons.

“Residents don’t have a neighborhood supermarket,” said Eric Stille, President/CEO of Nugget Market, the family enterprise started by his grandfather in 1926. “They have to go out of their immediate community.”

The Safeway is only around a mile away, but in the hyper-local supermarket world, closeness can make a difference in attracting customers, at least for a while.

Stille expects supermarket competition will come sooner rather than later.

Commercial real estate broker Steve Edwards agrees.

“Supermarkets follow the residential growth,” said Edwards, president of Sacramento-based The Edwards Co.

The Whitney Ranch location is a hotbed of residential growth for the entire Sacramento region. The income demographics are also attractive for businesses such as Nugget said Edwards: Rocklin has among the highest income residents in the Sacramento region.

For those who have not been to a Nugget Market, think of a cross between a Safeway and While Foods.

Nugget offers a mix of food items —, you can find your Coke-Cola and Twinkies — but also what Stille said are 5,100 unique local items, all coming from within 100 miles of corporate headquarters in Woodland and supporting local farmers and manufacturers.

“Affordable, artisan groceries,” is how Stille describes Nugget.

It also depends on what your buy. A visit by a reporter to a store in Davis on Thursday night also showed many pricey items. A 12-ounce can of CBC-infused soda cost more than $4.00 and a 16-ounce refrigerated bottle of diet-coke sold for $2.49.

The Nugget Market store in Rocklin will be 50,000 square feet, which includes a 6,000-square-foot mezzanine. and Indoor and outdoor areas to consume food on the premises.

The shopping center is part of what is officially called the Placer Creek Whitney Ranch master planned development, which entails more than 5,000 housing units.

Nugget Market operates 16 stores in Northern California, most in the Sacramento region. It saw its last store open, also in growing Placer County, in March 2021 in West Roseville, near Rocklin. It was the company’s second store in Roseville.

Stille said the company prides itself on customer service and treating its employees well. He said a $2.00 an hour COVID-19 differential has continued, while other supermarket chains only offered it temporarily. He said health insurance premiums are 100% paid by the company, even for part-time employees.