Whole Foods to open new stores in Bushwick, Cobble Hill
Streetview of 1224 Flushing Avenue © 2021 Google
Whole Foods continues to expand in Brooklyn. The Amazon-owned supermarket chain is set to open a new store at 1224 Flushing Avenue in Bushwick after signing a 15-year lease for a 10,000-square-foot space where it is expected to open one of its small-format convenience stores, according to Crain’s. The Bushwick location is the second new lease the supermarket giant signed for a Brooklyn store last week, following a 10-year deal at a former Rite Aid at 182 Smith Street in Cobble Hill.
Situated between Stewart and Wyckoff avenues, the 20,000-square-foot retail building sits on a prime corner adjacent to the Jefferson Street L train station and several of the neighborhood’s most popular entertainment venues, including House of Yes, just around the corner.
The building’s owner, Flushing 1224 LLC, bought the property in 2015 for $12 million, according to Crain’s. David Moore, the entity’s managing member, told Crain’s that he expects to open in late 2027.
Due to its more modest size compared to the grocery chain’s usual multilevel stores, the Bushwick location will likely take the form of a small-format grab-and-go convenience store, the first of which Whole Foods piloted on the Upper East Side in 2024 and remains open at 1175 Third Avenue.
The compact shops range from 7,000 to 14,000 square feet and offer the same high-quality products synonymous with the brand, but in a significantly smaller footprint. The stores sell grab-and-go meals and snacks, weekly essentials, and more, as 6sqft previously reported.
Whole Foods also signed a lease at a three-story building in Cobble Hill that formerly housed a Rite Aid. The pharmacy chain occupied the space until 2023, when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and began closing locations across the country and city. The property has sat vacant since then.
The lease is for 10 years with two five-year extension options. The building includes 23,334 square feet of office space and 11,666 square feet of ground-floor retail space, with a nursery school occupying a portion of the property. It is unclear whether the grocery chain intends to occupy all of the retail space or only part of it, according to Crain’s.
Since opening its first Manhattan store in 2001, Whole Foods has expanded across Manhattan and Brooklyn. In April 2025, the grocer signed a 12-year lease for 10,707 square feet for its small-format market concept at 774 Grand Street in Williamsburg, as reported by Commercial Observer.
Whole Foods also opened a 10,000-square-foot store in Stuytown in May and an 8,500-square-foot store in Hell’s Kitchen in June of that year.
In December, the grocer announced its first Queens location, in a former Rite Aid space inside a Beaux-Arts bank building at 55-60 Myrtle Avenue in Ridgewood. Whole Foods signed a 15-year lease for 28,000 square feet in the three-story property, with three five-year extension options.
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