A grocery store is finally coming back to the corner of North Pleasantburg Drive and Rutherford Road, where the old Bi-Lo has sat dark for nearly five years. Food Lion plans to open a roughly 42,000-square-foot store at 2111 N. Pleasantburg Drive in October 2026.
The property, part of the Field Plaza Shopping Center, has been vacant since Bi-Lo shut its doors there in 2021, according to the Post and Courier. Upstate Business Journal notes the irony baked into the move: Bi-Lo itself was founded in Greenville back in the 1960s before ceasing operations in 2021, and now its onetime rival is stepping into one of its old buildings.
In a written statement cited by Upstate Business Journal, Food Lion said the Pleasantburg Drive site was a great fit to bring its omnichannel shopping experience to the area, calling it part of a push to serve new areas and families. The company has not released a verified opening date or confirmed exactly which departments will be running on day one, but it has detailed what shoppers can generally expect from its newest locations.
What the New Format Looks Like
Food Lion's new-store blueprint, laid out in a September news release from Food Lion's newsroom, pairs self-checkout lanes with traditional cashier-assisted checkout. The release also describes pickup and home delivery through the Food Lion To Go website or app, along with an assortment that includes organic, gluten-free and plant-based items.
Those features are part of a broader expansion plan the grocer has been executing throughout 2026. By the end of the year, Food Lion says it will have opened 10 new stores, including six additional locations spread across the Carolinas and Georgia, per the same release. Earlier in the year, the chain opened four new stores in North Carolina and South Carolina during the first quarter alone, according to Grocery Dive, which reported those locations were built to include walk-in garden coolers, on-site fresh-cut fruit, made-to-order sushi, and self-service wing and hot-favorites bars.
A Growth Streak Backing the Expansion
Grocery Dive also reported that Food Lion has posted positive same-store sales growth for 52 consecutive quarters, a streak that helps explain the company's appetite for new real estate. The chain now operates more than 1,100 stores across 10 states, the outlet noted, giving it the scale to keep absorbing shuttered big-box grocery sites like the one on Pleasantburg Drive.
One of the clearest recent comparisons sits just a few miles south. Food Lion opened a 37,000-square-foot store near West Georgia Road and Fork Shoals Road in Simpsonville on March 25, its fifth location in that area, according to the Post and Courier's coverage of that opening.
The Greenville opening will mark another step in Food Lion's steady march through the Upstate, filling a storefront that has sat empty since the final Bi-Lo checkout rang up nearly five years ago. For a stretch of Pleasantburg Drive that has gone without a full-service grocery store since 2021, the return of a grocery store is set to be a welcome, if overdue, neighborhood fixture.
