Whole Foods readies new store in Washington, D.C.

Whole Foods will open a new 47,000-square-foot store in Washington, D.C., near the end of June, according to an announcement from the company.  

The new store, located at 7130 12th St. NW, is set to open at 8 a.m. on June 28, and will be part of the Walter Reed development. The grocer noted in a press release that the design of the new store incorporates elements of the historic army hospital, including reflective finishes, calming colors and other architectural elements.  

The store will feature more than 800 local products from vendors in the greater D.C. area, sourced by Daniela D’Ambrosio, local forager for Whole Foods Market’s Mid-Atlantic Region. 

The store also features organic, conventional and Sourced for Good produce. The Sourced for Good program is a collaboration between Whole Foods and various farms, suppliers and third-party certification groups to help improve wages, health care and the environment, among other initiatives. That includes salads from Bowery Farming and Gotham Greens 

Locally sourced items in the cheese department include artisan crackers from Firehook, goat and cow’s milk cheeses from FireFly Farms and fresh pastas from La Pasta, among others. Shoppers will also find a curated grocery section, a full-service meat counter with items from Bell & Evans, Koch’s Turkey Farm and Pennbrook Acres Farms, and a full-service seafood counter with local options from Ivy City Smokehouse, M. Clayton Seafood Company and Rappahannock Oyster Co.  

The store’s prepared food section will feature a number of options, including Kikka Sushi, New York-style pizza and both hot and salad bars. The bakery will make its own bread in house and, in addition to diet and vegan items, will carry Whole Foods Market’s Berry Chantilly Cake and brown butter cookies.  

The new store will also feature a bath and body section that includes candles from Handmade Habitat and Frères Branchiaux Candle Co. 

The store hours are 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. on opening day but will regularly run from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. The first 300 customers will receive a free tote bag with a coupon with offers up to $100 off. 

Whole Foods also announced that it is donating to the D.C. Food Project for student lunches; Real Food for Kids, which works to offer more healthy food choices in the D.C. school system; and Food Rescue D.C., which distributes food from grocery stores and restaurants to social service organizations in the D.C. area. 

Whole Foods runs more than 500 stores in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. Andy Jassy, CEO of retail giant and Whole Foods parent company Amazon, told shareholders in April that the company sees big potential in grocery and that it continues to invest in Whole Foods. Amazon opened 11 Whole Foods stores in 2022. It most recently opened a new Whole Foods in suburban Rochester, New York.  

"Over the past year, we’ve continued to invest in [Whole Foods] while also making changes to drive better profitability,” Jassy told shareholders in April. “Whole Foods is on an encouraging path, but to have a larger impact on physical grocery, we must find a mass grocery format that we believe is worth expanding broadly. Amazon Fresh is the brand we’ve been experimenting with for a few years, and we’re working hard to identify and build the right mass grocery format for Amazon scale. Grocery is a big growth opportunity for Amazon.” 

The new store is more than twice the size of the 21,500-square-foot Whole Foods that opened in Washington D.C.'s Glover Park neighborhood in February 2022. That store was among the grocer's first to feature Amazon's Just Walk Out technology, which enables shoppers to scan their own items and pay without going through the register.