TOUR: Village Market by Harris Teeter - Johns Island, SC

Harris Teeter

Opened: 2013

Previous Tenants: Piggly Wiggly
Location: 515 Freshfields Dr, Johns Island/Kiawah Island, SC
Photographed: January 2022

Now are we on Johns Island, Kiawah Island, or Seabrook Island? Well, Google Maps says Freshfields Village, the upscale plaza where this grocery store is (it's set up more like a recreation of a downtown than a standard strip mall), is on Johns Island (it's not). Freshfields Village itself says it's on Kiawah Island (it's not). Geographically, it's actually on Seabrook Island, which is to the west of Kiawah and to the south of Johns, but nobody identifies this part of the island as Seabrook. Anyhow, we are here to tour the Village Market by Harris Teeter at Freshfields Village!

This is the only full supermarket in the southern Johns/Kiawah/Seabrook Island area, and once again we see that the store is scaled back for the off-season since this area is tourist-heavy. Also as we tour the store, keep in mind that I visited at night, so operations were way lower than normal. The roughly 34,000 square foot was previously a Piggly Wiggly, as were so many of the Harris Teeters we've seen. This one appears to be using the Village Market branding less due to its size, which is what I initially thought, and more due to its higher-end positioning in the very upscale Freshfields Village. Remember that we saw a 26,000 square foot Harris Teeter in Norfolk, for instance.

We enter to the grand aisle, with prepared foods, cafe, and a Starbucks to the right of the entrance. Deli and bakery line the right side of the grand aisle, with cheese, wine, and seafood at the back. Meat lines the rest of the back wall, with dairy in the back left corner. The last few aisles run perpendicular to the rest of the store, and those contain the frozen foods and beer cases.

Here's the prepared foods and Starbucks in the front corner. As we see, things are scaled back for the off-season. Is that what was happening at KJ's? I can't imagine this store and that one have much overlap in their customer bases.

Floral department next to the entrance.

As we can see, there's not a whole lot of decor in this store but it does look very nice regardless. It seems to use roughly the standard HT decor package, although there's just less of it around the store.

At the back of the grand aisle we have a very attractive extension for cheese, wine, and seafood, which had closed for the night at the time of my visit.

I love the fixtures, signage, flooring, and wall tile, but come on -- replace those ceiling tiles or at least paint them all the same color!

Here we're looking across the back wall with the grocery aisles on the other side of the produce department, ahead to the left, and the meat department on the back wall.

This is a much larger meat and seafood department than we saw in our last Harris Teeter, which may mean that they're left over from Piggly Wiggly, or it may mean that Harris Teeter has changed its product mix and services here to reflect the more upscale clientele.

The grocery aisles are not particularly exciting, but the floor and ceiling look amazing here.

Because the store is on the smaller side, the selection might be a bit limited here and there. Why are all the supermarkets in this area so small?

Moving on to the back corner, we have the dairy department and the beginning of the beer/frozen alcove.

The fixtures here are clearly quite new, probably from when Harris Teeter opened in 2013. It seems that they did a full renovation when they moved in.

Here we see the division, looking towards the front of the store, between the grocery aisles (to the left above) and the frozen/beer alcove (to the right above).

And dairy is in the back of that corner.

The layout of this area is a little bit strange, but I suppose it works. I don't know why these couldn't be in just regular grocery aisles and make everything easier...

But the ceiling beams and the bright wall colors make the interior of this store very attractive.

And here's the front of the frozen foods department.

The front end extends from beyond that. I love those large circular light fixtures! Well this store may or may not actually be on Kiawah Island, but tomorrow we are going to take a look at the only grocery store (/surprisingly good cafeteria-style eatery...?) on Kiawah over on The Independent Edition!