Whole Foods Market
Opened: 2003
The Whole Foods at Newton Centre is a fairly innocuous-looking supermarket, but the 20,000 square foot supermarket's bland facade actually hides a long and interesting history. Around 1950, A&P built a roughly 10,000 square foot store here, facing the street with a parking lot at the side. By the end of the following decade, they'd nearly doubled it in size, expanding out the left-side wall and, in the process, turning that into the front wall so that the store faced the parking lot rather than the street. A&P actually remained here all the way until around 1980. By 1983, the space had become a Heartland Drug, which stayed until at least 1985, but by 1988, natural food store Bread & Circus had opened up. Whole Foods acquired Bread & Circus in 1992, but kept the name until 2003 when the store was officially rebranded Whole Foods. Around the time of Bread & Circus's opening, some additional loading dock and backroom space was added, bringing the store to its present size. Incidentally, the Heartland name was used by some businesses affiliated with Purity Supreme and its founders, but I'm not sure if Heartland Drug was related.
Inside, it's been renovated, but we can still tell it's an older Whole Foods. You enter on the left side of the store to floral, produce, and prepared foods on the left side. Dairy is in the first aisle, with meat and seafood on the back wall. Deli, bakery, and cheese are in the last aisle on the right side, along with frozen foods.
I assume that the flooring here in produce is older than the rest of the decor, which felt fairly new when I visited in 2019. The store hasn't been renovated since.
The skylights are a nice touch, and something we typically only see on newer and/or larger stores.
As we'll see, the whole store is scaled down quite a bit from what you might expect from a typical Whole Foods because of the smaller size, but there's still a lot squeezed into the space.
But the aisles are narrow for sure!
Newton Centre, what might be considered downtown for this part of Newton, is about half a mile east. Newton is a larger town with several villages within it, such as Newton Highlands, Auburndale, or Waban, where we're visiting tomorrow. The other real "downtown" of Newton would be Newtonville, which is north along the Mass Pike.
Meat and seafood are at the back of the store. Both service counters are in the back-right corner of the store, with meat on the back wall and seafood on the right-side wall.
I have to say... I'm not loving the interior design here. Whole Foods usually has really attractive stores, even in their smaller locations, but this one just feels cluttered and visually messy. I don't know what past decor packages might've looked like here, but I assume the many patterns and textures at one point made more sense together.
Seafood, cheese, and deli are on the right-side wall of the store, with bakery in the front-right corner.
And frozen foods are opposite that. Another challenge with this store is the relatively low ceiling, which doesn't give you much space for signage or decor of any kind.
Bakery in the front corner. Here, again, we see a hodgepodge of different colors and displays. Why is there a lime green bakery case with a maroon bakery case and a black bakery case in front of an orange wall on beige flooring with blue accent tiles? Feels like they need to get that design under control a little bit.
And a look across the front-end...
Opened: 2003
Owner: Amazon
Previous Tenants: A&P (ca. 1950-ca. 1980) > Heartland Drug (ca. 1980s) > Bread & Circus (opened by 1988, converted to Whole Foods in 2003)
Cooperative: none
Location: 916 Walnut St, Newton, MA
Photographed: July 20, 2019
About a mile and a half west is the village of Waban, which has one small supermarket right in the middle of it. Come back Monday for a look at that store!
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