QUINCY, Mass. -- Ahold Delhaize confirmed this week that its Fresh Formats division, which pioneered the millennial-friendly Everything Fresh and bfresh small-store concepts, would be rolled into its Stop & Shop store division.
The Netherlands-based company also said it would close Everything Fresh—Fresh Formats’ first store that opened in Philadelphia in 2014—and one of its three bfresh stores in Boston this week, according to a Winsight Grocery Business report. Additionally, the company will open a store in Newton, Mass., originally slated to open as bfresh, under a revamped Stop & Shop small format in 2018.
Reports said the company had also decided not to proceed with three bfresh stores planned for Philadelphia, but the company declined comment.
In addition, Ahold Delhaize said Eastside Marketplace, the Providence, R.I.-based store known for fresh and service initiatives acquired by the company and assigned to Fresh Formats group in 2014, would convert to the Stop & Shop brand.
Fresh Formats was founded as an independent division of Ahold with responsibility for testing new store concepts designed to serve growing customer bases that the company’s traditional supermarkets typically did not reach, including shoppers in dense urban markets and younger shoppers. Everything Fresh, the first such project of the group, opened in 2014 and a larger evolution of that store, bfresh, followed in Boston a year later.
“The decision to close the Everything Fresh store was a difficult one, but the location was always considered a ‘learning lab,’ and we intend to use those learnings going forward,” Ahold Delhaize spokesman Chris Brand told Winsight Grocery Business. “We are evaluating the best options for the Philadelphia sites and have no further announcements to make at this time.”
Click here to read the complete Grocery Business report.
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