Silver Lakers have been waiting forever to spend their whole paychecks at the Whole Foods set to open at Glendale near Fletcher, taking over the former Ralphs storefront with features including wine bar and outdoor seating. Sounds fancy, right? But, says Eastsider LA, the company has just announced a change in plans: the space is now set to be home to the first 365 by Whole Foods Market, the chain's new "convenient, streamlined, value-oriented" store. It's going in just about a mile away from the Silver Lake Trader Joe's, but at least it'll have better parking.
This new "convenient and affordable" store format means that the Whole Foods has renegotiated its lease and will open sooner than its previously projected date in late 2016—the store should be opening sometime in the first half of 2016 now. (Another 365 is set to open in Santa Monica in the same time frame.)
Whole Foods hasn't said whether or not the new store will still have all the fun stuff that the full-on WF was going to bring: booze, wine tastings, outdoor dining. It's also not clear if the change will mean that the market's size will shrink. Previously, the plan was to have the WF be a bit bigger than the Ralphs was—it was going to pull in a couple smaller storefronts between the now-empty market and the CVS—but part of the concept of these 365 stores is that they're supposed to be smaller than the usual WF caverns.
· Whole Foods to open lower-priced, "value" 365 store in Silver Lake [ELA]
· Silver Lake Whole Foods: Opening Date and Details REVEALED [Curbed LA]