The new owners of Zellers will soon expand the relaunched brand to Ontario but are first making a few tweaks.

The discount retailer, which currently has one location in Edmonton, will open a store on Orfus Road, just south of Yorkdale Mall in Toronto, on June 18 and another at Windsor’s Tecumseh Mall in July.

Joey Benitah, Zellers’ chief operating officer, said the plan is to slowly nationalize the brand.

“Ultimately, we’re looking to be in every major market from coast to coast,” he said in an interview.

“We’re in negotiations on new leases in a number of major markets, whether it be Brampton, Scarborough, Calgary, Vancouver, Ottawa. There’s lots of discussions happening.”

Like the Edmonton location at Londonderry Mall, which marked the retailer’s return last October, the Ontario stores will be stocked with apparel, home goods, luggage and seasonal items from brands including Adidas, Juicy Couture, Dickies and Von Dutch.

There will also be two new categories. Food — snacks like popcorn, chips and candy rather than the company’s nostalgic diners — as well as toys including plushies, puzzles, outdoor games and beach buckets will appear at the new stores.

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Benitah initially wanted to leave toys out of Zellers because he felt it would be too hard to compete with Walmart and Amazon.

He’s reversing course now because of customer feedback.

“We had a very small, limited selection of toys, when we opened Londonderry, and … they were among our highest sellers,” he said. “So that is an area that we’ve been looking at very closely and saying maybe we can strategically expand the toy department.”

The expansion comes as Toys “R” Us Canada is up for sale and closing many of its stores, potentially opening up space for another player in the market.

Asked whether he would make a play for the retailer, Benitah said, “We’ve got our hands full right now and Zellers is absolutely our No. 1 focus at the moment.”

His family is also behind apparel stores Fairweather, Designer Depot and International Clothiers, as well as home goods retailer Wyrth.

In addition to rebooting Zellers, the family has been working to revamp and expand Les Ailes de la Mode, a discount department store from Quebec.

Through Les Ailes de la Mode, the Benitahs bought the rights to the almost 100-year-old Zellers name last year from Hudson’s Bay Co., after it filed for creditor protection and closed its stores.

The purchase also included the Zellers logo and the rights to mascot bear Zeddy, loyalty program Club Z and the Zellers portrait studio. (Zeddy is due to be relaunched in time for the Tecumseh Mall store opening in July, Benitah said.)

Court documents have suggested the company could have paid as much as $100,000 for the trademarks but the family has never revealed the purchase price.

Before HBC collapsed, many of its stores contained Zellers departments selling home goods and toys from Australian brand Anko.

Prior to having Zellers departments in HBC stores, HBC had run Zellers as a stand-alone business with its own shops. It closed most of the chain’s stores by 2013 but kept a few liquidation outlets open until 2020, when the remainder shuttered.

Between the last of the stand-alone Zellers locations closing and HBC opening Zellers departments, the Moniz family of Quebec filed several trademark applications for terms like Zellers Restaurant Inc. The family was eventually sued by HBC for infringing on its intellectual property.

Court records show Les Ailes de la Mode has taken over as the ongoing case’s plaintiff.

The Moniz family operates three Zellers restaurants in Quebec, including one with a retail store.

Benitah declined to comment on the case.

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