Big Lake Chamber of Commerce

Member Spotlight: Three Bears Alaska in Big Lake

Until March 2020, groceries meant a drive to Wasilla for everyone around the lake. Three Bears Alaska ended that errand when it opened at 3457 S. Big Lake Road, inside a grocery building that had been standing empty for years. The timing proved fortunate, since the opening came weeks before pandemic restrictions made a nearby food source matter more than anyone expected.

Our series on Big Lake chamber members continues with a company that learned retail in towns about this size.

A company built for small towns

Larry Weisz Sr. opened the first store in Tok in November 1980 after years of managing locations for the Carrs grocery chain. He named it Gateway Food Store and spent nearly a decade learning what a small store in a small community actually requires. A second location followed in Valdez in 1989, opened with two partners. The three-way partnership inspired the Three Bears name.

Larry’s son Dave Weisz leads the dozen-store chain today, and the family still owns the company. Its expansion strategy has remained consistent for decades: skip the cities and open where residents face an inconvenient drive to a supermarket. Each new store adjusts its stock to what the community asks for. The company opens each location with a basic plan, and customers and local managers adjust it from there. Big Lake, an hour from Anchorage and about twenty minutes from the nearest Wasilla supermarket, matched that description exactly.

Inside the Big Lake store

Several stores share one roof at the Big Lake location. Groceries anchor the floor plan. Fresh meat and produce fill the front, and the deli counter sells hot food. The remaining aisles carry what a household restocks weekly. Pet food and office supplies are in there, so are health and beauty products and a wall of over-the-counter medications. The store takes WIC.

An Outpost Express section operates inside the same building. It stocks hunting and fishing supplies plus camping gear, which saves a trip to the sporting goods stores on the Parks Highway. Big Lake Ace Hardware shares the address as well, through a separate entrance and its own registers. A homeowner can pick up dinner and a box of deck screws in one stop.

Fuel and the Bear’s Den on Hollywood Drive

Three Bears also operates a convenience store a short drive away at 14468 W. Hollywood Drive. It opened in summer 2016 around a Shell fuel station. The pumps take cards 24 hours a day. Cash saves 5 cents a gallon during business hours. Inside, the Hot Stuff counter serves ready-to-eat food beside an automotive aisle and a soda fountain. Bear’s Den Liquor sells beer, wine, spirits, and mixers from its own section of the building. A resident can now cover the whole weekly list, hardware and fishing tackle included, without merging onto the Parks Highway once.

What shopping close to home means here

Shop local campaigns can sound abstract until a town spends decades without its own grocery store. Every carton of milk once required a 30-mile round trip. Now that spending remains on Big Lake Road, where it supports local jobs and keeps a large commercial building occupied instead of dark.

The store’s presence changes daily logistics for the whole area. Seniors on the west side of the lake shop without arranging a ride to Wasilla, and cabin owners provision on a Friday night instead of hauling coolers up from Anchorage. Local businesses in Big Lake benefit from that retained traffic, because a resident who no longer drives to Wasilla for groceries no longer eats lunch there either.

The chamber’s position on this is straightforward. Member businesses that anchor daily needs make every other storefront in town more viable, and the network becomes stronger each time a purchase that used to leave the community stops leaving.

Location and hours

The main store faces S. Big Lake Road at number 3457. Fuel and the Bear’s Den are a few minutes away on Hollywood Drive. Holiday hours can differ from the posted schedule, so a call ahead of a special trip is worth the minute it takes. Current hours for both locations appear on the company’s store locator at threebearsalaska.com.