It's official. Harris Farm Markets is coming to Canberra.
"Where?" "When?" My colleagues shout at me across the desk when the news comes through.
According to Tristan Harris, co-CEO of Harris Farm Markets, the brand-new store will open at Majura Park, in the Canberra Airport precinct, by the end of 2023.
For Canberrans unfamiliar with the Sydney brand, think Willy Wonka's chocolate factory but with fruit and veg.
In some stores, shoppers can select their bakery items from the "bread wheel", pour their own single-herd milk into reusable glass bottles and churn their own nut butters.
In Mr Harris' own words, the markets give shoppers a chance to deviate from the "everyday humdrum" of grocery shopping in favour of a more engaging experience.
"We are a fresh food market and we like to say that we're far more market than supermarket," he said.
"You can buy everything you need for your food shopping from us with a really significant emphasis on fresh food.
"In the Majura Park store, because it's so big, we'll have the luxury of being able to really lay it on with things like fresh bakeries and a café, a full-service butcher shop and full-service fish shop. A real shopping experience."
The Canberra store will also include a deli with more than 500 cheeses, dry-aged meat fridges, a juice bar, nut station and flower market.
The markets will partner with nearby producers to provide shoppers with a strong local offering.
"The beautiful thing about Canberra is it is surrounded by really terrific food producing areas and so a lot of the product we sell in Sydney is already from around Canberra ... our own range of jam comes from not far from Canberra, our biggest selling brand of eggs comes from not far from Canberra," Mr Harris said.
It will all be housed inside a 4500-square-metre building, located on currently vacant land between Ikea and Costco previously home to the circus. Canberra Airport confirmed the store will only take up half of the site, leaving room for the circus to return.
But you'd be wrong to think this will be Canberra's first ever Harris Farm Markets.
The company, which was founded in 1971 by Tristan's parents David and Cathy Harris, operated stores in the capital during the 1980s.
The Canberra stores closed around the early 1990s when the business ran into financial trouble and was forced to "start again from scratch", Mr Harris said.
Now under the direction of three of the five Harris sons, Harris Farm Markets has expanded to 28 stores across NSW and Queensland.
The return to Canberra has been in the works for several years.
"We have always looked at Canberra longingly," Mr Harris said.
"It's a very difficult market to get space in and we've wanted to be there for a very long time. We've been looking at a lot of sites very hard now for about five years."
Richard Snow, head of property at Canberra Airport, said the new store will complement the growing retail precinct.
"We are delighted to be partnering with Harris Farm Markets and that they have chosen Majura Park as the home of their new flagship large-format store in Canberra," he said.
Construction on the store will begin later this year, with completion slated for late-2023.
Until then, the company has a few more stores in the works.
"We've got a couple on the cards up in Queensland, we open Lane Cove in Sydney in about two months and then we've got our eye on a couple of sites down in Victoria, so there's plenty happening," Mr Harris said.
