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Whole Foods Daily Shop - Manhattan, NY

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By Zachary
Whole Foods Market
Opened: May 14, 2025
Owner: Amazon
Previous Tenants: Associated Supermarkets
Cooperative: none
Location: 409 E 14th St, Manhattan, NY
Photographed: June 13, 2025
Whole Foods has been in the news mostly recently for out-of-stocks related to a hack at UNFI, their primary supplier. But just before that, Whole Foods made the news for opening two new small-format stores in New York City, in mid-May here in Stuyvesant Town, and early June in Hell's Kitchen, which we'll see in a bit. This is the latest expansion for the small-format stores, with the first location opening on the Upper East Side in September.
Here in Stuy Town, a roughly 10,000 square foot Whole Foods Daily Shop has replaced a longtime Associated that closed in 2019. It's been extensively renovated and looks nothing like the previous Associated (which was pleasant and very old-school).
It's been long enough that I don't really remember the layout of the Associated, but here in the new Whole Foods, the produce department is in the front-right corner. The coffee shop and prepared foods counter faces that on the right side of the store, with cold cuts, baked goods, and cheeses behind it. (The coffee shop/cafe counter is the only service department in the store.) Dairy and meat/seafood are on the back wall, with frozen on the left side and grocery aisles in the middle. Health and beauty and floral are on the front wall between produce and the checkouts, which are in the front-left corner.
Like the Upper East Side store, this is an attractive interior with a simple but nice decor package.
I visited this store just over a week ago, and Whole Foods was definitely still in the thick of the UNFI shortages. That said, they had enough stock in most of the departments and categories, but notable exceptions with out-of-stock signage over empty shelves.
But here at Stuy Town, stocking was ongoing when I visited.
Many of the items being stocked were things that didn't come from UNFI, such as the baked goods being unloaded from the crates on the left below. Those are probably coming from a commissary, since they're not being made in-store.
Cheese and deli items at the back, with meat/seafood in the far back-left corner.
The grocery aisles are small but pretty complete, and it's likely that Whole Foods saw the success of small-format, high-end grocers here in the city and wanted to get in on the action. A store like that Lincoln Market is much more complete than this Whole Foods, and is somewhat larger.
It remains to be seen how this format ultimately will resonate with customers. As I mentioned on the Upper East Side post, this is now the second time Whole Foods has used the Daily Shop branding; the first time, it was intended for convenience stores, and this time around, it's small supermarkets. There are currently three locations, all of which are in Manhattan, but additional stores are on the way in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Hoboken.
Whole Foods had initially suggested the brand could come to other cities, where there are similarly small spaces available in the urban areas, but so far I can't find any documentation of other locations on the way.
Snacks and single-serve beverages in the front-left corner. Customer service is the counter you can see straight ahead below, on the left-side wall, and the checkouts are beyond the snacks to the left.
Meats and cold cuts here in the last aisle, which is short because the front half has a frozen foods department with cases running perpendicular to the aisle.
Notice that the decor in these Daily Shop stores is very different from the typical Whole Foods decor -- not to mention that there's not very much of it, presumably because the ceilings are somewhat low -- but I do like this sign in frozen foods.
A look across the front wall, back towards produce on the right side...
As you can see above, the store is not all that large, and it's much wider than it is deep, so this is not a large supermarket. There's a Trader Joe's that's probably slightly larger and a Target across the street from this store.
Now let's check out the other new Daily Shop location...


Whole Foods Market
Opened: June 4, 2025
Owner: Amazon
Previous Tenants: Rite Aid
Cooperative: none
Location: 301 W 50th St, Manhattan, NY
Photographed: June 13, 2025
Continuing the trend of Rite Aids becoming supermarkets (here's an incomplete list of drugstores in the NYC metro area that have become supermarkets) is this Hell's Kitchen store. At 8500 square feet, it's a little smaller than the Stuy Town location, but the layout is a bit more straightforward because it's a more normal building shape.
Produce is in the front-right corner with deli/bakery and prepared foods behind it. Meat is on the back wall with dairy and frozen on the left side, then a walkway with beer and single-serve beverages sends customers into the registers in the front-left corner.
I don't know if this is a result of the UNFI shortages or just a change in the way Whole Foods does business, but the greens and vegetables were all wrapped in plastic which I haven't seen previously. My guess is that, this way, the products can be sold by the unit and scanned rather than looked up by PLU and weighed. That might be a result of the fact that this store is fully self-checkout.
That said, why bother with the plastic wrap, especially given the sustainablility focus of Whole Foods? Doesn't it seem extremely wasteful, when so many NYC supermarkets look like this? (That's the new Food Dynasty in Rosebank on Staten Island.)
Moving right along. You can see that this location, being on the corner of 50th Street and 8th Avenue, has large windows along the outside.
Prepared foods, cheeses, baked goods, and cold cuts are behind produce. No service departments here, which seems to be the standard for these Daily Shop stores.
They're definitely very different stores from the average New York City supermarket, and that seems to be by design. There aren't many other stores of this size with this much open space, which I know doesn't look like much. But compare this store to the 7500 square foot Shop Fair in Hudson Heights, also a former Rite Aid, and you see exactly what I mean. The larger supermarkets have more space, but in buildings several times as large as this. My guess is that Whole Foods wants customers to feel like they're in a store that's not the average city CTown or Key Food.
That said, I do wonder what the future of Whole Foods is. They have recently been brought more directly under Amazon's control, and simultaneously (and I have to assume, not coincidentally) have been drifting more mainstream and away from their original strictly-organic and natural positioning.
You can see here for sure that this store isn't merchandised like that Shop Fair, with a much smaller selection and many more facings of the same products (see Shop Fair's dairy case here). Again, I believe that's intentional, to distinguish the stores. Both the Hell's Kitchen and Stuy Town stores seemed busy when I visited, so at least for now, whatever they're doing seems to be working. They're also both new enough, though, that they could just still be enjoying the novelty sales bump. As I said, it remains to be seen how the format is resonating with customers.
And the UNFI shortages can't be helping sales.
On the same day I visited these two stores, I also visited half a dozen Key Food-affiliated stores in New York City, whose primary supplier is also UNFI. None of those stores had any evidence of out-of-stocks, although the hack is affecting independent grocers. Key Food and UNFI recently terminated their agreement, and Key Food will transition back to C&S as their primary wholesaler in September. UNFI is paying Key Food a $53 million termination fee. I assume that Key Food is currently pulling from C&S or some other wholesaler, at least in part, because the stores were fully stocked in all the departments.
Frozen foods on the left side of the store, with snacks and beverages leading up to the registers in the front-left corner.
Here you can see the all-self checkout model I mentioned earlier. There's a staffed customer service counter, but no service registers. These stores are clearly designed for small orders (and I don't even believe there are full-size shopping carts, just small double-decker ones).
I'm glad to see execution seems to be pretty good at these locations, though we'll see how they go long-term. But I'd always rather see these spaces go to independent grocers rather than an Amazon-owned chain, especially one that's getting farther away from its mission with every passing year. Still, it's nice to see a new and different format opening up here in the city. Lots more to see this weekend, and on Monday, it's back to Boston!

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