New Meijer grocery store opens in Franklin

A new grocery store opened in Franklin this week, which was exciting news for shoppers glad to have yet a second new option for where to stop compared to a year ago.

Meijer opened its second location in Johnson County with a 192,000-square-foot grocery store and super center in Franklin on the west side of U.S. 31 near Commerce Drive. The other store in the county is at State Road 135 and Main Street in Greenwood.

The new Franklin store opened at 7 a.m. Tuesday with a line of several dozen shoppers waiting outside to get in. This is the second grocery store to open recently in Franklin. A Kroger Marketplace on U.S. 31 opened in September.

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Kristy Bechert, a single mom with two kids, said being able to find good deals on food is essential to her budget, and having more stores to compare prices with will be a great help.

“I want to save money,” she said.

The main benefit of having the two new stores is more options, several shoppers said Tuesday morning.

Opening this location in Franklin is an important step as it brings Meijer closer to residents who might have wanted to shop at the store but didn’t want to have to drive across the county, store director Nicole Kidd said.

Debra Fentz was impressed with the new store and anxious to get inside. Another resident lives in a neighborhood just north of Meijer and appreciates how convenient it will be to shop there.

“It’s good for the community to have options,” Crystal Taylor said.

For Mike Hendrickson, a Franklin resident who has worked at the Meijer in Greenwood for more than two decades, the new location means a much shorter commute and savings on gas.

The shorter travel time also will help his wife, Martha, as she won’t have to make the 50-minute round trip several times a month to pick up medicine from the pharmacy.