Drive the corner of McCall Boulevard and Menifee Road this month and you'll see what the city photographed back in July: cleared dirt, a sign staked into the ground announcing a Stater Bros. is coming, council members in hard hats posing with shovels. It looks like progress, and it is. But if you're planning your grocery runs around a new supermarket opening soon, the timeline says otherwise. Summer 2027 is the target for doors open, a full year out from the ceremony that made the local news.
That gap between the photo op and the actual opening day is worth sitting with, because three different projects are moving through Menifee's permitting and construction pipeline right now at three very different speeds. The one that got the least attention is the one closest to actually happening.
What's Confirmed at McCall Square
The July 9, 2026 groundbreaking marked the start of construction on the anchor tenant for McCall Square, the shopping center rising at the northwest corner of McCall Boulevard and Menifee Road. The new store will be the fourth Stater Bros. location in the city and the first built to serve the Heritage Lakes community directly. That distinction matters more than it sounds. The company's third Menifee store opened back in 2017 at the Shoppes at the Lakes center on Newport Road, which means homes in the newer Heritage Lakes section, further east off Newport, have been a longer drive from a full grocery store for years. McCall Square is designed to close that gap. It just won't close it until next summer.
Most of the center around the future supermarket is already open and running. A 7-Eleven, a Starbucks, a Chipotle and a Jersey Mike's have been serving customers there for a while. A Baskin Robbins and a McDonald's are still under construction on the remaining pad sites. Small shop suites between roughly 975 and 2,562 square feet are still being marketed by the developer, SRS Real Estate Partners, which means the final lineup of businesses at McCall Square isn't locked in even as the anchor store breaks ground. Grocery stores are simply the slowest piece of any shopping center to build. About a year between shovel and shelf is normal for a project this size.
The Diner Still Filing Paperwork
Across town on Antelope Road, a much quieter project is moving through the same city process. Richie's Real American Diner, the "old fashioned country cookin'" chain that's been part of the Temecula Valley food scene for decades, has construction documents on file with the city for an 8,820 square foot dine-in restaurant at Menifee Lakes Plaza, 29787 Antelope Road, Suite 110. It would join existing Richie's locations already open in Temecula, Murrieta and Rancho Cucamonga.
The family history behind the expansion adds some texture worth knowing if you've eaten at any of the other locations. Jack and Linda Williams opened the first Richie's in Temecula back in 1991, after years running a string of Sizzler franchises. Their daughter and son-in-law, Sally and Gary Myers, carried the business forward, and their son Bryce now runs it alongside them under the name BMW Management, the same ownership group listed on the Menifee project's city filings.
There's no public opening date yet, and the diner hasn't broken ground the way Stater Bros. has. But the paperwork tells you something the press release didn't. The city's own project documents already list a civil engineer, a structural engineer, an architect, an electrical and mechanical engineer, a soils engineer, a sign company and a dedicated foodservice design firm, all assigned to a building roughly a tenth the footprint of a supermarket. Restaurant buildouts at that scale typically move faster once permits clear, simply because there's less structure to raise. If that pattern holds, a diner that entered the public process months after Stater Bros. broke ground could still end up serving its first plate around the same time the supermarket opens, or sooner.
The Corner With No Ribbon Cutting
The project actually moving fastest through Menifee right now isn't a place any resident will walk into to shop. Southwest Traders, a food distribution company that's been family owned since 1977, is relocating its headquarters out of Temecula and into a Menifee facility being built out as a refrigerated and subzero freezer distribution center. According to the city, Southwest Traders expects to begin operations at the new Menifee site this fall, once the tenant improvements and construction now underway wrap up.
Southwest Traders got its start in San Diego County and expanded into Temecula back in 1986. Now it's moving further up the Interstate 215 corridor into Menifee, the same freeway spine that runs through the middle of the city. The company describes the move as a response to rising demand for its supply chain work with independent and national restaurant chains. The city says it expedited permitting and construction specifically to get the facility open faster.
This one won't show up as a new dinner option or a new place to pick up groceries. What it adds is another employer and another set of jobs on the ground, months before either retail project across town finishes construction. It's the quietest of the three announcements, and as of this writing, the one with the nearest completion date.
Where Each Project Actually Stands
| Project | Location | Status as of September 2026 | Target opening |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stater Bros. at McCall Square | Northwest corner of McCall Blvd and Menifee Rd | Ground broken July 9, 2026 | Summer 2027 |
| Richie's Real American Diner | Menifee Lakes Plaza, 29787 Antelope Rd, Suite 110 | Construction documents filed, permitting in progress | Not yet announced |
| Southwest Traders distribution HQ | Menifee, exact site not yet public | Tenant improvements underway, permitting expedited | Fall 2026 |
What This Means Over the Next Twelve Months
If you live near McCall Square, the July groundbreaking is the start of a construction schedule, not the end of one. The supermarket won't be part of your weekly routine until next summer at the earliest, and even then, some of the smaller shop spaces around it may still be finding tenants. If you're on the Antelope Road side of town, watch for actual fencing and grading at Menifee Lakes Plaza rather than another press mention. That's the real signal permitting has cleared, and once it does, the diner's own countdown could move quicker than the supermarket's. And if you notice more delivery trucks and hiring signs on the edges of town this fall, that's most likely Southwest Traders ramping up well before either restaurant or retail project is close to finished.
None of this is a reason to plan a move. It's a reason to recalibrate what "coming soon" actually means in a city adding this much commercial square footage at once. A few things worth keeping an eye on over the next several months:
- Fencing and grading activity at Menifee Lakes Plaza, which would signal Richie's has cleared plan check
- Hiring announcements or increased truck traffic tied to Southwest Traders ahead of its fall target
- Additional tenant announcements for the smaller pad and shop spaces still available at McCall Square
The project with the press conference isn't always the project that opens first. In Menifee right now, it isn't even close.
For the evening side of what's changed in Menifee this year, the concerts and markets already filling the city's parks, our Friday night field guide covers what's already up and running.
If you're curious what any of this growth means for your own corner of Menifee, Jordona Hertz and her team track these shifts block by block. Get your free home valuation anytime you want to know what it adds up to for you.
