A burgeoning e-commerce business at Albertsons Cos. hasn’t blurred the supermarket giant’s focus on brick-and-mortar stores as the bedrock of the customer relationship.

“We try very hard to touch at least 10% of our store base each year with remodels to keep them current,” said Susan Morris, executive vice president and chief operations officer, told Supermarket News in an SN Off the Shelf podcast interview. “As far as 2020, we’ll still get to remodel at least 10% of our store base this year and probably open somewhere between 10 and 15 new stores.”

In fiscal 2019, Albertsons opened 14 new stores and remodeled 243 locations, and through the fiscal 2020 first quarter, the Boise, Idaho-based company has upgraded 46 stores.

“It’s really important for us to invest in our store base, making it look great for our cus-tomers, keeping up with our current offerings — expanding on fresh, which is important to us — and modifying to accommodate our growing e-commerce business,” said Mor-ris, who has held her current post since January 2018 and has been with Albertsons for the past 10-plus years.