On a recent trip out to Washington D.C., I visited Whole Foods’ Daily Shop store that just opened in Arlington, Va.
It’s a new concept — a smaller, urban-focused version of the traditional Whole Foods grocery store. The first three Daily Shop locations opened in New York City over the past year, and Whole Foods announced Wednesday that it will open two more stores in Brooklyn and New Jersey in December.
The store in Arlington sits at the base of a Booz Allen Hamilton office building in the Crystal City neighborhood, nearby Amazon HQ2. It replaced a former Amazon Fresh store — a reminder of Amazon’s ongoing experimentation in the $890 billion grocery industry.
“Pick up your grab-and-go meals, snacks, and weekly essentials,” noted a sign at the front door.
Outside, several black vertical metal-frame signs reading “Produce” and “Deli” are mounted on white subway-style brick tiles, giving the storefront an upscale, modern feel.
Inside, it feels much like a regular Whole Foods — green-painted walls and a produce section just past the entrance.
The Daily Shop occupies more than 10,000 square feet — roughly a quarter to half the size of an average 40,000-square-foot Whole Foods Market, according to the company. It still manages to fit the essentials — produce, prepared foods, packaged meat and fish, alcohol, toiletries — without feeling cramped.
It’s also the first Daily Shop to offer Amazon pickup and returns.
When I visited around 3 p.m., one staffed checkout and six self-checkout stations reinforced the store’s grab-and-go focus.
It’s hard to place Daily Shop into a grocery category. It is larger than a 7-Eleven but smaller than a Safeway — closer to a mini grocery store. In some ways, it felt like a Trader Joe’s, which have an average footprint of around 15,000 square feet.
In a press release announcing the Arlington Daily Shop, Jose Gomez, the store team leader, said: “If you want a quick lunch, need some ingredients on your way home from work or you’re stopping in for a meal to-go ahead of a flight, we’re ready to serve you!”
In fact, I was actually heading to my flight at the nearby Reagan airport — in the target market for the new store.
The Daily Shop in Arlington is just a short walk away from a full-sized Whole Foods adjacent to Amazon’s HQ2 campus. So I walked less than a mile to compare the experience.
Prices were identical at the traditional store, compared to Daily Shop ($6.99 for a pound of chicken breasts, $5.29 for a dozen extra large brown eggs, $4.29 for a slice of pizza). Given its larger size, it also had much more to offer — a robust hot food bar (Daily Shop only had pizza slices and chicken), a coffee shop, a fresh meat/seafood case, etc. There were also advertisements for holiday catering and an area for grocery delivery orders.
Whether grabbing a quick lunch, a to-go meal before a flight, or a couple of ingredients for dinner — I prefer the larger Whole Foods location. The expansive hot bar and wider selection of items make it a better option for me. There’s also a Costco a few blocks away.
Some of the initial Google reviews for the Daily Shop store reflect this sentiment.
- “Also, it’s not a Whole Foods if you don’t have a hot food/salad bar. Total waste of space. Disappointing considering it’s next door to my favorite movie theater.”
- “Not sure what the point of this place is. Went in a week ago looking for hot/cold dinner; they had a couple slices of pizza.”
- “It’s a smaller version of the same store right around the corner, except the ‘fresh goods’ are not very fresh.”
Other customers praised the store for friendly staff and cleanliness.
Whole Foods reported Wednesday that 42% of shoppers at the Daily Shop location in New York City’s Lenox Hill neighborhood were either new or re-engaged Whole Foods customers — “proving the concept is successful at driving new business to the retailer.”
I could see the stores attracting more traffic in a “food desert” where there aren’t many other grocery options, including a traditional Whole Foods location. It seems to primarily serve urban professionals, commuters, or nearby office workers.
“At our new store formats, we’re tailoring every square foot to the unique, fast-paced needs of urban lifestyles, ” Whole Foods exec Christina Minardi said in a press release last year.
The grocer said Wednesday that berries, grapes, and avocados are among the top-selling items across Daily Shop locations, along with ready-to-eat foods and rotisserie chickens.
Daily Shop may appeal more so as a place to return Amazon orders. Several customers mentioned their desire for a package return service in reviews of the Daily Shop in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.
The stores could also serve as a testbed for new Amazon grocery technologies — as the company did with its “Just Walk Out” checkout-free system, which debuted in Amazon Go stores before expanding (and later being removed) from Amazon Fresh locations.
Other retailers are finding recent success with small-format stores, which need to be more selective about which products are stocked but can offer a faster shopping experience and appeal to urban customers that just need a few items, Business Insider reported.
Whole Foods has tried small-format concepts before, including its now-discontinued “365 by Whole Foods Market” stores.
On a recent earnings call, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said he was “very excited” about Daily Shop and said the initial three stores in New York City were off to a “very good start.”
Amazon has had mixed results in grocery overall, dating back to the initial launch of Amazon Fresh in 2007 to the $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017 and beyond. It has introduced new store formats, paused and restarted expansion, and shifted away from its “Just Walk Out” technology.
Last week, Amazon revealed another grocery experiment: a “store within a store” model that uses automated micro-fulfillment to bring name-brand items into Whole Foods locations.
It’s part of a recent effort to weave Whole Foods into its broader grocery business.
The company’s grocery arm is led by Jason Buechel, the CEO of Whole Foods who expanded his role earlier this year to also oversee Amazon’s Worldwide Grocery Stores business. Whole Foods workers will become Amazon employees in December.
Amazon said it had more than $100 billion in gross sales of groceries and household essentials in 2024, excluding sales from Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh. The company is also pushing tighter integration of fresh grocery delivery with other Amazon.com products.
