Recorded live at the third annual Loblaw Supplier Summit, Sharla Paraskevopoulos, Senior Vice President Real Estate at Loblaw Companies Limited, joins Michael LeBlanc to unpack how Canada's largest retailer decides where and how to build. Sharla covers the new No Frills store design and its yellow beacon, why banner spacing rules were scrapped, balancing efficiency and experience, the data behind site selection, AI in energy and maintenance, and the first Shoppers Drug Mart redesign in 23 years.
The Myth that stores were going to go away and be replaced by eCommerce was just that: a myth. Nobody knows that better than the person leading the team that built thousands of them.
Recorded live at the third annual Loblaw Supplier Summit, Michael LeBlanc sits down with Sharla Paraskevopoulos, Senior Vice President, Real Estate at Loblaw Companies Limited, for a fast-paced, candid look at how Canada’s largest retailer decides where to build, what to build, and what a store should feel like when a customer walks in.
Sharla’s path to real estate is a unique one: 18 years at Loblaw, starting in HR, moving to Shoppers Drug Mart as one of the first colleagues over after the acquisition, then five years leading operations for roughly 500 conventional grocery stores — including during the COVID era. Her takeaway from that stretch is a leadership lesson as much as a retail one: with no playbook and no textbook, you set clear objectives and anchor every decision to them.
Then it’s on to the stores.
Sharla explains why Loblaw scrapped the old guardrail that kept banners five kilometres apart, and why its formats now coexist far more comfortably than anyone assumed. She unpacks the thinking behind the new No Frills design — the yellow frame as a beacon for value and volume, a simpler box underneath, and a deliberate refusal to signal discount through dim lights and shabby presentation. As she puts it, you shouldn’t have to feel discounted to shop value.
She also opens up the data engine behind it all: the Market Analytics team sizing trade areas by population, income and cultural demographics; analogue stores used to forecast how a proposed location will perform; and data running through construction, value engineering, procurement, energy and CO2 measurement. AI is already live in maintenance — centrally dimming lights, managing climate, spotting a fridge heading for failure before it fails.
And a preview of what’s next: Shoppers Drug Mart is being redesigned inside and out for the first time in 23 years, with more discovery and treasure hunting on the way.
Store development, as Sharla says, is a blend of art and science.