Whole Foods Market opened its second small-format grocery store in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan Wednesday and has its sights set on Hell’s Kitchen next.
The 10,000-square-foot Whole Foods Market Daily Shop is the Amazon-owned grocery retailer’s second small-format location—the first opened in Manhattan’s Upper East Side Lenox Hill neighborhood in September.
The new East Village store features a Java & Juice, a cafe and juice bar concept restaurant that serves coffee, tea, juices, smoothies, sandwiches and desserts, Whole Foods said in a press release.
“This store is unique and reflects the energy, diversity and culture of the neighborhood we serve,” Christian Damaso, store team leader for Whole Foods Market Daily Shop, said in the press release. “We’ll be stocked with fresh, high-quality ingredients and prepared foods – whether they’re picking up coffee or a smoothie, grabbing lunch to-go, or doing their weekly grocery shop – we look forward to welcoming our customers into this new space.”
Whole Foods noted that its next Daily Shop location will open in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood on June 4, and more are planned for Hoboken, New Jersey, and the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.
The Daily Shop concept, which ranges from 7,000 to 14,000 square feet, aims to lure city dwellers. It puts the chain in better competition with other grocery retailers operating and experimenting with small-format chains like Trader Joe’s, Aldi, Sprouts Farmers Market, BJ’s and Target, among others.
Phoenix, Arizona-based Sprouts Farmers Market launched its small-format strategy in 2022, and has ramped up the format over the last few years. “And partially thanks to this expansion effort, Sprout saw visits to its smaller format stores increase by nearly 50.0% over the same period—helping the brand outpace the overall grocery sector in early 2024,” Placer.ai said in a July blog post.
The move by Whole Foods and others represents a further blurring of the line between convenience and grocery formats, enabling retailers to more easily and inexpensively penetrate urban markets.
In related news, Foxtrot Café & Market, a similar small-format chain, plans to open its seventh Chicago location on Thursday. The grocer filed bankruptcy in 2024 but has since relaunched with seven locations, the newest at 935 W. Webster Ave. in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood.
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