Amazon will soon be making its grocery store presence known in the Washington DC area with as many as three new supermarkets and two other “Go” convenience stores. Food World confirmed in June that the internet juggernaut would be opening full-fledged supermarkets in Fairfax, VA; Franconia/Manchester Lakes, VA; and in the Friendship Heights area of Chevy Chase, MD. In a recent article, the Washington Business Journal (WBJ) also noted Amazon’s future intent to open supermarkets in those locations and provided more detail about the Seattle-based company’s plans.
The Fairfax location was originally intended to open as a “365” unit, Whole Foods Market’s (WFM) scaled down version of a discount store that was to be a tenant in the new Point 50 shopping center. When Amazon acquired WFM in June 2017, it scrapped the 365 concept in its entirety. A few of those locations nationally became conventional Whole Foods stores, while a few scheduled stores that were still unbuilt were in limbo. Now a beer and wine permit sign has been posted on the window of the 30,000 square foot store on Fairfax Boulevard indicating Amazon’s likely intent to open one of its new and yet unnamed supermarket-type formats.
The Franconia/Manchester Lakes location was once a Shoppers Food Warehouse that closed in February 2020. Amazon plans to occupy about 31,000 square feet of space (about 50 percent of the original footprint). According to WBJ, plumbing, gas and electrical permits for the shopping center list the project as “Mendel’s Market,” a code name for Amazon’s physical retail projects that appears in some job ads, contracting leads and Amazon employee LinkedIn profiles.
The story also notes that “Mendel’s Grocery,” also appears in renovation documents for a 33,000-square-foot former Giant store at 5463 Wisconsin Avenue in Chevy Chase, MD. Giant closed that store in January 2020.
No opening dates for these locations have been announced. Currently, there is only one Amazon grocery store that is open – its planned original unit in Woodland Hills, CA. But that unit, which opened in March, has been operating as a “dark store,” serving Internet orders since its debut.
Amazon is also working on two other Washington, DC units that are likely to open as “Go” convenience stores – an 8,000-square-foot location at 1701 14th Street NW at the “Liz” luxury apartments, and a 12,700-square-foot c-store at 901 H Street NE. Amazon now operates 26 “Go” units (five are temporarily closed) in four cities – Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Seattle.
Moreover, Amazon has been quietly adding real estate for planned supermarket openings in the Philadelphia market (Warrington, PA and Bensalem, PA); Northern New Jersey (Woodland Park, NJ and Paramus, NJ which were both acquired at auction from Fairway Market); as well as locations in Schaumburg, IL and Irvine, CA.