If this store's exterior looks vaguely familiar, that's because we've actually toured this exact store before! Okay, it was back in our
first trip through Westchester, in August 2017. I first visited this store back in February 2017 when it was the independent Greenside Market. Greenside closed in late 2018 with new owners taking over in early 2019 and gut-renovating the store. When I visited in March 2019, the store was still in its soft-opening phase, with permanent exterior signage yet to be installed (
it has since). Now we've already seen Greenside, but I'm going to include some of those pictures in this post to do a kind of before-and-after comparison.
2017
2019
Grand opening festivities aside, the store has little change outside. As we'll see, this is not the case inside. All new cases in the produce department, which still lines the left side of the store. Beer is still in the back corner, with meats on the back wall, though there is no longer a service butcher counter (Greenside had one but it was permanently closed). Frozen and dairy still line the last aisle, and the deli in the front corner has been approximately tripled in size to accommodate an expanded selection, a custom sandwich counter, and a hot food bar. Let's head in...
2017
2019
Okay so... this isn't an exact comparison but you get the idea. The first picture is taken from the back of the first aisle, and the second one is taken from the front of the second aisle. Though the store's approximately 9,000 square foot size has not increased, it feels many times as large.
2017
2019
When I revisited this store, I was not aware how extensive the interior remodel had been and absolutely could not believe my eyes. The variety in the produce department feels like it's been doubled as well.
2019
Beer remains at the back of the first aisle. It looks like all the fixtures are brand-new as well.
2017
2019
Former butcher counter at the far side covered over with grocery shelving. Also, notice that all-new flooring has been installed throughout the store.
2019
Looking towards the front in the second aisle.
2017
Grocery aisles looking pretty sparse back in 2017 at Greenside. A note on aisle numbering, Greenside numbered the first two aisles as aisle 1, given the produce department straddling the two. In that system, there were 5 aisles. Met Fresh considers the first double-wide aisle as two aisles, so it has six aisles, although there has been no layout change. Does that make sense? Either way this above picture is the second-to-last aisle.
2019
Beautifully updated grocery aisles. So glad that weird red flooring is gone, and the green ceiling for that matter. And not only was Met Fresh far better stocked than Greenside, there were more people shopping.
2019
Dairy lines the right-side wall of the store, with frozen opposite.
2017
2019
Unfortunately, I didn't get any "before" pictures of the front-end, mostly because there was a group of employees including a manager hanging out at the deli doing nothing because the store was empty. I got quite a few after, which shows how fantastic the store looks now.
2019
Huge deli counter in the front corner, like I said literally three times the size it used to be.
Deli is closest to the middle of the store, with custom sandwich bar in the middle and hot food at the far front of the department. (You can see the rounded hot food cases at the far front of the counter.) That section is approximately the size of Greenside's deli, which was also farther to the side of the store. It's possible that Met Fresh took out a register or two to accommodate the expansion here. I believe Met Fresh has four registers, which is plenty. When I visited at a weird time in the middle of the afternoon, the store was still busy with two registers open and lines at both.
I am so glad to see the enormous improvement here as this part of downtown White Plains needs a really good supermarket. Hopefully Met Fresh continues to succeed here!
Met Fresh Supermarket
134 S Lexington Ave, White Plains, NY
Photographed March 2019
Kinda strange to see the aisles numbered 01, 02, etc. (rather than just 1, 2, and so forth), especially in a store that doesn't exceed single digits in terms of aisle count. I see the registers are numbered in the same way. That said, I do quite like the look of the aisle markers, although I'd like them even more if those arrows at the top actually extended outward symmetrically on both sides of the marker.
ReplyDeleteFair enough, that makes sense to me!
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