Inside the Store: Whole Foods’ Daily Shop makes the most of a tight space

NEW YORK — Whole Foods Market’s first Daily Shop small-format store will open its doors on Wednesday in an Upper East Side neighborhood in New York City. 

Spanning just over 9,100 square feet, the new store, at 1175 Third Ave. in the city’s Lenox Hill area, offers everything Whole Foods customers might expect to find in the traditional store model but prioritizes convenience over an immersive in-store shopping experience. 

The location is the first of five Daily Shops Whole Foods plans to open in the city. In July, the grocer said it is planning to open a second Daily Shop at 301 W. 50th St. in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. On Friday, the grocer said its third store under the small-format concept in the city will be located at 409 E. 14th St. in the East Village’s StuyTown development. Both of those locations are due to open early next year.

The Daily Shops aim to be destinations for fill-in, quick shopping trips. But, aside from being in smaller spaces, the stores will also be “clustered” near full-size Whole Foods locations, Stephanie Curley, Whole Foods’ senior principal for growth and innovation, said during a tour of the Lenox Hill location. 

The first Daily Shop, for example, is situated between the grocer’s Midtown East location and its Upper East side store.

Christina Minardi, executive vice president of growth and development for Whole Foods and Amazon, added that this layout creates a unit of Whole Foods stores that can accommodate multiple types of shopping trips. 

Grocery Dive toured the grocer’s first Daily Shop location on Monday before its opening to learn what the new format aims to offer shoppers and see how the grocer aims to make the most of the smaller space.

Scaled-down offerings

Back in 2022, Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel said he wanted to bring back the “theater of retail” by innovating in-store experiences. Since then, Whole Foods has added features like multiple food vendors, in-store bars and even a viewable meat cutting room at its store alongside New York City’s High Line elevated walkway.

The Daily Shop concept, however, takes a more understated approach. 

Whole Foods’ soon-to-open store only houses one food vendor, Juice & Java, offering coffee, tea, smoothies, juices, sandwiches, soups and desserts. And while the Lenox Hill store offers standing-room counter space for customers, standing room will not be included in every Daily Shop location, Curley said.

Rather than preparing foods in-house, all New York City Daily Shops will daily receive freshly made foods prepared at the grocer’s newly opened 10,000-square-foot micro-kitchen in the borough of Queens, Minardi said. The micro-kitchen will make all the grab-and-go items like sandwiches, empanadas and fried chicken as well as bakery goods like bread and pastries.

Without meat and seafood counters, the Daily Shop also eliminates the roles of in-store butchers and seafood mongers, Minardi noted. The meats and seafood sold in-store are primarily offered in smaller quantities, highlighting how the format caters to fill-in grocery shopping trips.

While the Daily Shops will have fewer SKUs than Whole Foods’ full-size supermarkets, the company’s aim is for them to offer 75% of what a traditional Whole Foods store carries, Curley said.

Design tweaks

High ceilings and windows letting in natural light make the Lenox Hill Daily Shop feel bigger than it is, but Curley and Minardi also pointed out other subtle design choices that give the illusion of a bigger space.

Many of the shelves and the sides of display cases are clear — as opposed to the darker Lozier shelving used in the full-size stores — to avoid making displays look heavy in a tighter space.

“The idea is to use every single inch, which a lot of stores in Manhattan do a really good job of,” Minardi said.

Aside from wall-to-wall cases of food and fully-stocked shelves, the Lenox Hill Daily Shop also has flexible display cases that workers can adjust as needed to match rotating product displays as well as customer flow.

With convenience as the focal point of the Daily Shops, self-checkout will be the primary checkout option. The Lenox Hill store has 10 self-checkout kiosks as well as two traditional checkout counters, Curley said

While the store will be equipped with Amazon’s palm payment technology, Minardi noted that the store doesn’t have plans to use Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, which Whole Foods pulled earlier this year from its two stores that had been equipped with the tech. 

Future Daily Shops will also house Amazon return counters, although the Lenox Hill location as well as the other upcoming New York City stores won’t feature one.