If you have run errands in Erin Mills since spring, you have probably parked in at least two different lots to get through your list. Sephora and a birthday-party candle run inside the mall. Bao and produce at a supermarket that didn't exist in January. A chicken sandwich, eventually, from a drive-thru that is still just a rendering on a city planning document.
That is not a coincidence and it is not you being inefficient. Erin Mills Town Centre and the retail around it have quietly reorganized into two distinct places that happen to share a postal code. One is indoors, walkable, and increasingly about beauty and browsing. The other is outdoors, car-first, and increasingly about food and groceries you can grab without ever stepping inside the mall. Understanding which is which will save you a loop around the parking lot the next time you head out.
What Moved Indoors
Walk the lower level of Erin Mills Town Centre this year and you will notice the mall has been filling in around its central court with things you browse rather than things you grab. Sephora opened there on March 6, its 144th Canadian location, taking space in the central court area on the lower level. Booster Juice landed nearby that same month, on the same lower level, adding smoothies and wraps to a stretch of the mall that has been leaning experiential for a while.
The most notable arrival opened this month. BigCanoe Indigenous Market set up near Sephora, Miniso, and Aldo, in a roughly 1,000-square-foot storefront, and it is the first Indigenous-owned and operated store in a Mississauga mall. Owner Jared BigCanoe, a member of the Georgina Island First Nation, built toward this over more than a year. He first appeared at the mall for Indigenous History Month in June 2024, came back the following September with a display of artwork and shirts for Orange Shirt Day, and won a pitch contest that earned him a December kiosk. The kiosk did well enough that mall management offered a permanent storefront, timed to open during National Truth and Reconciliation Month, which runs through September.
"The opening of the BigCanoe Indigenous Market Storefront shines a beacon to those still stuck in addiction," BigCanoe said of the store, which sells beading, art, and culturally crafted goods alongside space for storytelling and ceremony.
None of this is random filler. A mall marketing team choosing beauty, wellness drinks, and a first-of-its-kind cultural retailer for its interior court is making a specific bet on what draws people inside on foot rather than through a drive-thru window.
What Moved To The Curb
Everything that requires a car and a bag of groceries has been landing somewhere else entirely this year, and mostly not inside the mall at all.
The clearest example sits a short drive from the enclosed mall, at 3060 Ridgeway Drive in the Erin Mills Power Centre, a separate open-air property from Erin Mills Town Centre itself. T&T Supermarket opened its roughly 40,000-square-foot store there on April 9, its second Mississauga location and 15th in Ontario. Shoppers started lining up outside at 5 a.m. on opening day. Deputy Mayor Matt Mahoney and Councillor Alvin Tejod joined CEO Tina Lee for the ceremony. The store debuted a Baby Bear Bao, made with pulled pork, peanut crumbs, and cilantro, as a Canada-first item available only at that location for a limited time.
Lee was direct about why the location mattered. Customers on the west side of the city had been driving more than 30 minutes to reach T&T's existing Central Parkway store, and the Erin Mills location was built to serve them along with shoppers from Milton, Burlington, and Oakville. That is a grocery run that used to mean a real trip. Now it is a stop on the way home.
Meanwhile, at the opposite corner of the property, a very different kind of expansion is working its way through city hall. In April, Chick-fil-A Canada filed an application with the City of Mississauga for a drive-thru restaurant at Eglinton Avenue West and Metcalfe Avenue, the same quadrant where IHOP already sits. That corner is already home to an Indigo book store, an LCBO, a Wendy's, a Tim Hortons, and a BarBurrito, and the proposed building would replace part of an 80-space parking lot, removing 33 spaces to make room for a double drive-thru lane. As of this writing the application is still in the planning process, so treat any opening timeline as speculative until the city signs off.
Here is the split laid out plainly:
Where | What opened or is proposed | When |
|---|---|---|
Mall interior, lower level | Sephora | March 6, 2026 |
Mall interior, lower level | Booster Juice | March 2026 |
Mall interior, lower level | BigCanoe Indigenous Market | September 2026 |
Erin Mills Power Centre (separate property) | T&T Supermarket | April 9, 2026 |
Mall exterior, Eglinton & Metcalfe | Chick-fil-A drive-thru | Application filed April 2026, not yet built |
Why The Split Matters More Than The Openings
The easy version of this story is a list of new places to try, and every local outlet already ran that version back in the spring. The more useful thing to understand, if you actually live here, is that the two halves of Erin Mills' retail are now optimized for two different kinds of trips, and mixing them up is what costs you the extra fifteen minutes.
If your plan is to wander, sample a scent at Sephora, and pick up something from BigCanoe while you are at it, you park once, at the mall, and stay on foot. If your plan is groceries, bao, or eventually a chicken sandwich from a car window, you are heading to a different lot entirely, most likely the Power Centre off Ridgeway Drive or one of the exterior plazas nearby where places like Milestones and Turtle Jack's already do business. Those zones do not currently connect by a pedestrian path that makes hopping between them convenient, so a single outing that touches both usually means two separate parking spots.
That is worth knowing before a weekend errand run turns into more driving than it needs to be. It is also worth knowing if you are the kind of household that has watched this corner of Mississauga fill in for years and wondered what direction it was actually heading. The interior is being built for people who want to linger. The exterior is being built for people who want to get in, get out, and get home with dinner.
What This Looks Like Right Now
With Truth and Reconciliation Month running through the end of September, BigCanoe Indigenous Market's opening lines up with a specific and limited window if you want to see the storefront's launch programming rather than just the shelves. T&T's Baby Bear Bao was announced as a limited-time item back in April, so do not assume it is still on the menu without checking when you go. And the Chick-fil-A corner is still a parking lot as of this writing, so plan around the Wendy's, Tim Hortons, and BarBurrito that are already there rather than a drive-thru that has not broken ground.
None of this requires you to do anything differently than you already do. It just explains why your last few trips through the neighborhood have felt like two errands instead of one.
If you are watching how a neighborhood evolves and want the kind of grounded, local read that goes beyond a store list, the Larose Team covers South Mississauga and the surrounding GTA the same way, block by block, with the details that actually change how a place lives day to day.
