Today's store tour is about one block west of the Fairway and Sunac we saw at 6th Ave and 25th St. Today we're at 7th between 24th and 25th. This Whole Foods has been here for a while, but has been newly remodeled. The former Whole Body space, which sells health and beauty items, used to be next door but has been converted to a convenience store with health and beauty being incorporated into the main supermarket. We're going to see the convenience store tomorrow.
You enter with produce and seafood in the first room. The wall to the right above is the front wall of the store, with checkouts running along the side wall, on 24th Street.
Produce, seafood, and floral are in the first room, with meat and bulk foods lining an extremely cramped walkway to the back room, which contains grocery aisles, dairy, frozen, and deli/bakery. Checkouts run along the side in a single-line format.
The seafood counter is very nice, and wraps around to a butcher counter on the side of this peninsula. The checkouts are behind the bulk foods area.
It's worth noting that the outline lettering is really cool. The walls are a little too white for me, but it's an extremely attractive store nonetheless. Just a little cramped.
You continue through the walkway and the store opens up to bakery and deli, with the entrance to the checkouts to the left. Hard to tell whether the store bakes on premises, but there is no service bakery -- all of the bakery cases are set up as self-service.
Along this side wall, we proceed to deli, with cheese and prepared foods in the back corner.
Odd that there's no sign over deli -- and, actually, that the cheese department is only labeled as "specialty."
As usual, the cheese selection is fantastic.
The prepared foods department rounds out with pizza on the back wall.
Dairy lines the back and side walls, with health and beauty in the back corner.
The grocery aisles run parallel to the front wall of the store, meaning that the layout of the supermarket is in fact pretty standard, just rotated 90 degrees. Frozen is in the second to last aisle.
Lots of white walls, ceiling, aisle markers, everything. At least the floor is a nice polished concrete!
For the maximum number of registers, they line both sides of the exit hallway. There are three lines, and they rotate for the next available register. Clearly, people are expected to do small shopping orders here (and they do) -- in fact, I don't believe the store offers shopping carts here.
And that about wraps up our tour of the supermarket side of this Whole Foods! Come back tomorrow for a look inside the WFM convenience store next door.
Whole Foods Market
250 7th Ave, Chelsea, Manhattan, NY
Photographed May 2019
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