Oakland is getting a second Grocery Outlet next week. The Emeryville-based discount chain will open Thursday, Oct. 22, at 301 East 18th Street on the east side of Lake Merritt, filling a Walgreens that closed last year. The store will be independently owned and operated by Jorge Cossio.

When and where

Doors open at 8 a.m. on Oct. 22, according to the store's grand-opening listing. The address is 301 E. 18th St., in the Eastlake neighborhood a short walk from Lake Merritt. KTVU reported Monday that the space sat empty after Walgreens shut that pharmacy last year, one of several Bay Area drugstore closures after the pandemic.

Oakland already has a long-running Grocery Outlet on Broadway at 29th Street. The Lake Merritt location will be the city's second. A separate new store planned for Moraga's Rheem Shopping Center has been delayed into early 2027, KTVU reported.

Opening-day deals

Grocery Outlet's release, as summarized by KTVU, says the first 100 customers will receive gift cards for "mystery amounts" of up to $500. The store's event page puts the range at $5 to $500, requires customers to be 18 or older, and says cards will be handed out at random with no purchase required. Shoppers can also enter to win $1,000 in free groceries from Oct. 22 through Nov. 20. Free reusable bags are promised while supplies last, and a ribbon-cutting and community donation ceremony is planned the same morning.

The company, which calls itself a "bargain market," says most products sell for 40% to 70% less than regular retail prices by buying overstock and closeout goods. That pitch matters in Eastlake, where residents have lost a nearby pharmacy and face rising grocery costs. National food prices were up 2.7% over the year ending in August, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures cited in KTVU's report.

Part of a wider Bay Area footprint

Grocery Outlet is headquartered in Emeryville. In March it announced it would close 36 underperforming stores in California and elsewhere; no Bay Area locations were on that list, and the chain has kept expanding here. A North Beach store opened in August in a former Safeway space in San Francisco. The Lake Merritt opening fits the same reuse pattern: a vacant big-box or drugstore footprint turned into a discount grocery.

It also lands in a week when Oakland retail news has been about larger projects, including planning filings for a first Costco in West Oakland. For Eastlake shoppers, the nearer change is simpler: a second Grocery Outlet within the city, opening on a set date at a named corner that has been empty since Walgreens left.

Bay Area Brief will note any change to the Oct. 22 opening date if the company or the city posts one.