Food Lion opens Tuesday in east Charlotte’s former Harris Teeter at Idlewild and Margaret Wallace roads

Food Lion opens a new grocery store on Tuesday, October 7, at 5706 Wyalong Drive in the Mintworth Commons shopping center at Idlewild and Margaret Wallace roads in east Charlotte, the Charlotte Observer reported on August 12. The store fills the space Harris Teeter left in April.

The building has been empty since Harris Teeter closed the store on April 10, nearly six months before Food Lion’s opening day. Harris Teeter had operated at the site since 2011, a 15-year run serving neighborhoods along the Charlotte-Matthews line, Hoodline reported. After the closing, the space was marketed for lease, according to property records cited by Hoodline. Harris Teeter is owned by Kroger, whose 2026 consolidation targeted as many as 60 underperforming or overlapping supermarkets nationwide, Hoodline reported, citing Fast Company.

The store at a glance

The Observer, WSOC and Hoodline reported the main details of the store:

• The address is 5706 Wyalong Drive, Charlotte, NC 28227, in Mintworth Commons.
• Opening day is Tuesday, October 7, WSOC reported.
• The store covers 48,831 square feet, according to Hoodline.
• Shoppers will find produce, meat, everyday groceries and ready-to-eat, ready-to-cook and ready-to-heat meals, according to the Observer.
• Checkout includes cashier lanes and self-checkout, with online pickup and delivery.

Store hours and hiring numbers were not included in the announcements.

Why the store closed in the first place

Harris Teeter closed the Idlewild Road store on Friday, April 10, citing a strategic market review, WBTV reported at the time. The closing affected more than 100 employees, according to WBTV.

Workers started getting notice in January, and Harris Teeter said they would be offered transfers to other stores, WBTV reported in an earlier story. That report put the number of affected employees at 100 to 120 and said the store would close on or before April 17. The later report gave the final day as April 10.

The loss drew attention from JD Mazuera Arias, who represents the area on City Council and took office in December 2025. He warned of a growing amenities gap in east Charlotte, where new housing has outpaced stores and services. Mazuera Arias told WBTV that “there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.”

He had made the same argument in a rezoning vote, according to WBTV. Mazuera Arias opposed a 125-unit affordable senior housing project, saying his objection was not to the housing but to a pattern of adding homes in parts of the city that already lack retail and services.

Food Lion’s plan for the store

Food Lion started in Salisbury in 1957 as Food Town and is now part of Ahold Delhaize, the Dutch-Belgian company that also owns Hannaford and Giant. The company said the store is “intended to complement our existing store network,” according to the Observer. The company described the location as added convenience for customers who already shop at nearby Food Lion stores. Two other Food Lions are less than 2 miles away, the Observer reported. The company said the new store will strengthen Food Lion’s overall presence in the market while those nearby stores keep serving customers.

The east Charlotte store is part of a larger push. Food Lion is spending $484 million across the chain’s Charlotte-area stores on new locations and upgrades to produce, bakery and deli departments, self-checkout, to-go service and energy-efficient equipment, K104.7 reported, citing the Observer and WSOC. Food Lion has 103 stores in the Charlotte region and ranks third among grocers in the market, according to the same report.

A busy fall for Charlotte grocers

Food Lion is opening in a busy season for Charlotte grocers. The region’s grocery market is worth about $10.8 billion a year, with Walmart first and Harris Teeter and Food Lion each holding roughly 15% to 16% of sales, Hoodline reported, citing industry data. That works out to about $1.7 billion a year in sales for each of the two chains, spread across 737 grocery stores in the region, according to the same report.

Food Lion has been adding and remodeling stores across the Carolinas. The chain opened four new Carolinas supermarkets in the first quarter of 2026, and remodeled stores have posted higher average weekly sales than stores that were not renovated, Hoodline reported, citing Grocery Dive.

Several other chains are making moves this season:

• Wegmans opens the company’s first Charlotte-area store on October 14 at 11550 North Community House Road in Ballantyne, with about 450 employees, as covered in the Sept. 22 report. The 110,000-square-foot store will be the chain’s fifth in North Carolina.
• Harris Teeter announced a $253 million, three-year plan on September 17 to upgrade Charlotte-area stores and open three new ones in Kannapolis, Fort Mill and Lake Wylie, K104.7 reported.
• Sprouts Farmers Market plans a fourth Charlotte-area store in a former Earth Fare at 8885 Christenbury Parkway in Concord, the chain’s first in a Charlotte suburb, according to Cabarrus County filings reported in January. No opening date has been announced.

Tammy DeBoer, Harris Teeter’s president, said the investments target areas where the company can better support customers, from department upgrades to in-store convenience, according to K104.7. None of Harris Teeter’s three new stores is in east Charlotte. The company’s upgrades are planned in phases at stores in Matthews, Waxhaw, Concord, Huntersville, Fort Mill and Rock Hill, according to K104.7.

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