Stewart’s Shops plans to open Baldwinsville store this summer

BALDWINSVILLE — Stewart’s Shops Corp. — a privately-owned, convenience-store chain headquartered near Saratoga Springs — plans to open a new Baldwinsville store this summer, its second location in Onondaga County.

Stewart’s Shops has been successful with its first Onondaga County location on Morgan Road in Clay, which opened in October 2014. And the company wants to continue to expand its presence in the greater Syracuse region, says Maria D’Amelia, public relations specialist at Stewart’s Shops.

The store opening on Oswego Street in the village of Baldwinsville will generate 18 new jobs, including the manager’s position. The new store will encompass 3,000 square feet with sections designated for ice cream, a make-your-own-sub station, a pizza station, and other food items, D’Amelia says. 

Expansion is a recurring theme for Stewart’s, which has 332 stores across upstate New York and Southern Vermont, according to its website.

The company has invested $30 million in store-expansion initiatives. “As we grow, we reinvest in stores with additions, remodels, or just by rebuilding them,” D’Amelia says. “It helps us serve our customers better.”   

This year Stewart’s plans to construct 20 stores — half will be new stores and the other half will be replacements of existing stores — across its market area, she says.

Stewart’s generates $1.6 billion in sales annually. Ice cream is one of its most popular items, especially when the retailer runs sales on half-gallon cartons, D’Amelia says. 

Stewart’s Shops sell milk and ice cream, coffee, beer, other groceries, takeout food, and gasoline, including diesel. 

The company’s other stores in Central New York are located in Minetto, Oswego, New Berlin, plus several stores in the Utica–Rome area. That helped Stewart’s when it entered the Syracuse market.

“When we arrived at the Syracuse area, there were people who knew us from the surrounding areas who had visited family or lived previously where there was a Stewart’s location,” D’Amelia says. 

The firm Hilltop Construction Co., based in Hudson Falls, N.Y., will be building the Baldwinsville stores for Stewart’s. 

The company also plans to add another store in the Syracuse area but has not finalized the location. The new Stewart’s Shops will be company-owned stores as are all its locations. 

Stewart’s Shops is family and employee-owned, with the employees owning nearly 40 percent of the company’s shares through an employee-stock ownership (ESOP) plan, D’Amelia says. Stewart’s makes a $9 million profit-sharing contribution to its ESOP each year, according to its website.

Stewart’s current president, Gary Dake, is part of the Dake family that founded the business. It began as a dairy business in 1917 and eventually started opening ice-cream shops in 1945. 

Stewart’s Shops employs more than 4,500 people total across its shops, dairy, ice cream plant, distribution center, and corporate offices, according to its website. 

Stewart’s Shops says it produces and/or distributes 75 percent of the products it sells in its stores. The company’s trucks pick up milk from local farms to deliver to its dairy daily, where it is pasteurized and packaged, according to the site. Stewart’s also makes and packages ice cream, juices, and “refresher” drinks. “We even use our own blow-mold equipment to make gallon, half gallon and refresher bottles,” the site says. 

The Stewart’s company warehouse has a commissary where employees make more than 1 million pounds of chili, soups, chicken and rice, macaroni and cheese, and other products annually.