PCC Community markets returns to downtown Seattle

PCC Community Markets, a community-owned grocery cooperative in the Puget Sound region, today announced plans to return to Downtown Seattle at 4^th & Union with a new small format style store occupying a portion of the footprint of the traditional format store that closed in January 2024.

Catering to office workers and downtown residents seeking hot, fresh, and prepared foods during their workday, the new store will also carry a limited selection of grocery and pantry items. Like any PCC store, all products will meet the co-op’s quality and sourcing standards, and the shopping experience will be similar to other neighborhood stores operated by the co-op. 

PCC is contractually obligated to its long-term lease obligation at the downtown location despite the past closure of its full-service grocery store. Considering this, the co-op’s leadership team has worked actively for the past eight months, in close partnership with its landlord Wright Runstad, on innovative ways to reactivate the space in a manner consistent with the co-op’s triple bottom line focus on people, planet, and profit. 

The idea for a small format food market, approximately 6,500 feet in size, was informed by insights and lessons learned from the previous store’s two-year operating tenure, and particularly the performance of its highly successful prepared foods and deli department. This new store will recreate the best of that experience, while also making available a selection of other perennial shopper favorites. 

PCC will utilize the remaining space immediately adjacent to the new store to relocate the co-op’s office that serves the 15 stores it operates in the Puget Sound area. PCC will not renew its current office lease when it expires in 2025, believing that the cost, size, and location of the space does not best represent the co-op’s values.

As the organization embraces a post-pandemic, hybrid workplace for its centralized support functions, the new downtown location offers a significant and necessary reduction in office space, with the added benefit of adjacency to one of the co-op’s stores. It also delivers an overall reduction to the co-op’s rent expense burden.