Yahoo Movies Rouses to open another Mississippi Coast grocery store in a spot empty for years
Crews will transform the former Winn-Dixie grocery store building on Pass Road in Biloxi into the newest Rouses Market on the Mississippi Coast.
Rouse CEO Donny Rouse said Friday his company has agreed to lease space at 2348 Pass Road, at the corner of Popp’s Ferry Road.
The 60,000 square foot building has sat empty since March 15, 2018. It will undergo a comprehensive remodel inside and out.
“I know Biloxi will be very excited about what we do with the space,” Rouse said. “It will be very different from the old grocery provider that was in that spot, not only in how it looks, but in the products and services offered.”
Rouse said the store will provide local seafood and local produce along with entire lines of Gulf Coast products.
“We will have our own sausage kitchen, smokehouse, bakery, florist and seafood boiling room in the store, and everything you could want to eat,” he said.
Big news for Biloxi
“The development is a direct result of our plans to extend Popp’s Ferry to U.S. 90,” said Biloxi Mayor Andrew “FoFo” Gilich, “making the area a major corridor connecting communities east and west and north and south of the bay. This is a perfect example of a public/private partnership between the City of Biloxi, X3 Tango Development, SMPDD (South Mississippi Planning and Development District), and Rouses Markets.”
Work is expected to start in April and open in spring 2024. It will employ about 200 people.
Rouses has three other stores open in South Mississippi — in Ocean Springs, Gulfport and Diamondhead — and is working to open a $10 million store in Picayune.
Residents have long clamored for Rouses to open in Biloxi. The new store will be between the Ocean Springs store, where Rouses spent $3.5 million in 2017 to totally remodel, and the former Winn-Dixie store on Pass Road in Gulfport, which Rouses completely renovated and opened in 2019.
Eager shoppers jammed traffic near the Gulfport store for weeks after it opened in June 2019.
Rouses Market keeps growing
Anthony J. Rouse Sr. opened his first store in Houma, Louisiana, in 1960 and the family business has grown to 64 Rouses Markets across Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.
Rouses Markets is now one of the largest independent grocers and fastest growing family owned companies in the United States, according to the company website.
CEO Donny Rouse is the third generation of his family to run the company.
The chain has a blog and its own magazine. It is the official supermarket of the New Orleans Saints and partners with the team to stock local food banks through Tackle Hunger food drive.
