Foodland Mount Gambier held a grand ceremony over the weekend to celebrate the store’s new management.

The family fun weekend in Mount Gambier Central commenced Saturday with an official ribbon and cake cutting by Mount Gambier Mayor Lynette Martin OAM.

The festivities included an in-store scavenger hunt, free glitter tattoos, pop-up hub of local businesses, South East Snake Awareness, giant games, raffles, hourly giveaways and savings centre wide.

Foodland Mount Gambier owner Bhupendra “Ben” Sethia said he first visited the Blue Lake city a few years ago on a holiday from Melbourne.

“We found that this is such a lovely place, and the people are so nice and then this opportunity came to buy this store,” he said.

“I just looked at it and thought there is so much potential here and it is such a vibrant thriving community, so we wanted to integrate the community with our presence.

“It has been an amazing journey, we have only had two weeks to try and revamp the store, we got new lighting, new stock and new staff while retaining the existing ones.”

Mr Sethia said he wanted to use the business to give back to the local community.

“We just want to give that sense of community and to do that, how we started is we gave a big donation to Foodbank just to give back to the community,” he said.

“Then we gave out a lot of sanitisers to health facilities as well, three pallets of those which was donated so we just wanted to start with a sense of belonging, integrating and giving back.

“We want to make an impact in the community and work with the community.

“Whatever we can do to help the community here … we will endeavour to do that and really make an impact.

“It is just good to see that revival of Foodland South Australia today at Mount Gambier.

“We look forward to engaging the community and invite people to come back to be a part of the new Foodland journey.”