Sprouts Market Holds Job Fair Wednesday and Thursday

August 24 is the long-awaited target date for the reopening of the grocery store in Goleta’s Fairview shopping center. The Sprouts Farmers Market going into the location is holding a job fair today and tomorrow to fill 150 jobs available in the bakery, meat, deli, produce, vitamin, and cashier departments. Applicants are asked to bring résumés to the Best Western Plus Pepper Tree Inn at 3850 State Street in Santa Barbara on Wednesday, July 13 from 8-11:30 a.m. and 1-7 p.m. and Thursday, July 14 from 8-11:30 a.m. and 1-6 p.m. Walk-in interviews are being held in conjunction with Snagajob.com. The store is hiring for nonunion jobs, said Lisa Wong with the United Food & Commercial Workers union, Local 770.

The grocery store at 175 North Fairview Avenue, formerly a Vons, had been part of Haggen grocery store’s ambitious expansion out of the Pacific Northwest into California, Arizona, and Nevada. The strain caused Haggen to file for bankruptcy in September 2015 after opening the first of its newly acquired stores — part of a sale of Vons/Safeway and Albertsons stores to avoid monopolies after a merger between the two — in March 2015, according to contemporary news accounts.

The Fairview location will be the last of Santa Barbara County’s six Haggen markets to reopen for business. Lompoc’s 1500 North H Street Albertsons reopened as an Albertsons; similarly, Goleta’s Turnpike Vons returned as a Vons after a short, unhappy stint as a Haggen. The Cliff Drive Albertsons is now a Vons, and Smart & Final Extra! now occupies the former Linden Avenue Vons in Carpinteria and S.B.’s Five Points Albertsons.