Whole Foods Market / Daily Shop
Opened: September 18, 2024
Owner: Amazon
Previous Tenants: The Food Emporium
Cooperative: none
Location: 1175 3rd Ave, Lenox Hill, Manhattan, NY
Photographed: September 25, 2024
We're here to check out the very first small-format Whole Foods Daily Shop location, which has taken around 9000 square feet of a former Food Emporium on the Upper East Side. Whole Foods has
used the Daily Shop branding previously, but those stores have all been closed or rebranded. (A full-sized Whole Foods at Bryant Park, for instance, has a small grab-and-go type storefront on the first floor, but it's not branded Daily Shop.) Most recently, Whole Foods announced they
intend to use the banner for small supermarkets rather than convenience stores.
This space, on the ground floor of the Trump Palace, was previously a Food Emporium. It opened under A&P and was acquired by Dan's Supreme Supermarkets, a Key Food operator, in 2015. It remained open under The Food Emporium banner until early 2023. The Food Emporium took up two floors, with the deli, bakery, prepared foods, floral, and cafe on the main floor and the produce, meat, seafood, grocery, dairy, and frozen departments in the basement. Whole Foods is now only on the main floor, with a much-condensed but, surprisingly, full-line supermarket.
The produce department is in the front left corner inside the entrance, roughly where Food Emporium's deli and bakery were. Baked goods are in the back-left corner with deli, meat, seafood, and cheese on the back wall and dairy in the back-right corner. A few short grocery aisles run side-to-side in the middle of the store with a coffee shop on the front wall; frozen foods are in the front-right corner.
It's impressive to me how Whole Foods has truly managed to scale down their stores into a compelling small-format location. Interestingly, though, notice that the signage outside doesn't identify this one as anything other than a regular Whole Foods; Daily Shop branding only appears on smaller signs in the windows.
It's hard to tell whether there is any in-store bakery or deli prep is going on, but the breads are self-service but very nice.
Looking up towards the front of the supermarket...
Here's the coffee shop, which faces the entrance in front of produce. I love the color scheme here and throughout the store, and I thought the lighting was exceptional. I think Whole Foods has been nailing store design lately, although there are some I've seen recently that aren't great-looking.
The space is at the base of a tower, rising dozens of floors above it, so there are a fair number of awkward posts and beams, but it's designed pretty well. Beer is on the back wall of the store.
The coffee shop and checkouts are on the other side of this low case of beverages on the front we can see below.
There aren't many grocery aisles, but it's definitely filled with the basics. Notice that there's still a fair amount of space around, though, so the selection is pretty limited but there's definitely enough space to navigate, which you can't say for some other stores of this size.
HABA and nonfoods are in this turquoise shelving. I like the blue and teal tones throughout the store.
Back over on the back wall, we have a small meat and seafood department and a cheese case. As we can see, these are all significantly scaled down compared to other Whole Foods stores. There are no service departments here other than the coffee shop.
You can see just how slimmed-down the cheese department here is, but still, it's a nice selection of the basics.
Dairy and frozen on the right side of the store. I assume this goes without saying, but none of the fixtures are left over from The Food Emporium.
There are several more supermarkets very nearby, including Ouri's, a
beautiful but small kosher supermarket across the street.
Grace's Marketplace, an upscale market and cafe, is a block east. Manhattan staple grocer Morton Williams is also three blocks north, five blocks south, and two blocks east.
This is the 14th Whole Foods store in Manhattan, and there are full-sized stores a dozen blocks south or 20 blocks north.
Two aisles of frozen foods are in the front-right corner in front of the grocery aisles.
And you'll excuse the terrible photos of the crowded checkout area, but this is the best I could do. There are rows of self-checkouts on both sides of this exit area, and there are no staffed checkouts at this store.
However, there were lots of employees helping with self-checkout, meaning it moved very quickly when I was there.
Here's a look at the Daily Shop branding outside...
I'm excited to see more of these small-format stores and from my observations at this one, I'm betting it'll be a successful format. Check out this weekend's other stores!
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