Traveling retail concept Pop Up Grocer is settling down in New York City.
After executing nine one-month shops in seven cities, including Miami, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and Austin, the experiential retailer is opening a permanent 1,500-square-foot Manhattan shop on March 3 at the intersection of Bleecker Street, Minetta Lane and Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village.
Although the shop is Pop Up Grocer’s first permanent location, it’s not its first stop in New York City. It had a SoHo pop-up in 2019 and a pop-up in the Brooklyn neighborhood Greenpoint in 2020.
A destination for discovery, the forthcoming store will feature the curated assortment of eye-catching and design-forward consumer goods that Pop Up Grocer is known for from over 130 emerging brands across food, beverage, home, beauty, wellness and pet. The permanent outpost will launch with Dune’s adaptogen- and collagen-infused beverages, Brightland’s olive oil and Wild One’s pet food.
“Pop Up Grocer is uniquely an advertiser-first platform, meaning that we focus on giving these brands exposure and visibility as a priority,” says founder Emily Schildt, who previously worked in marketing and communications for Chobani. “New York seems like a natural fit for being able to do that. It’s a huge market of opportunity and possibility for them to have exposure in what I refer to as this sphere of influence. There are just a lot of tastemakers here and people of meaningful impact that it’s really valuable for them to get in front of.”
To start, there will be 10 to 15 brands in what Pop Up Grocer calls its “Body” category, including oral care from Minti; skincare from Futurewise, Pink Moon, Taylor of Brooklyn, Quiet Hours and Onélogy; cannabis-aided athletic recovery and performance products from Weed Sport; and sexual wellness and intimate care from Nakey and Woo More For Play.
An ingestible wellness selection dubbed “Boosters + Blends” will have Alice Mushrooms functional chocolates, Clarabe mushroom gummy vitamins, Golde ingestible products, Supermush supplement sprays and electrolyte flavored water enhancers from Plink!.
“There’s a lot of interest in mushroom products and the functional benefits of mushrooms, mushroom gummies from Earth & Star, mushroom coffee,” says says Schildt. “We have a functional mushroom chocolate that comes in day and night. So, a sleep aid and a coffee replacement or energizer.”
Pop Up Grocer currently uses a consignment model for the brands it stocks, which Schildt notes is better for beauty brands than food brands because the former products have a longer shelf life. She says, “They actually can resell the inventory that does not sell with us.”
Schildt believes there could be an opportunity for the Body collection to expand its real estate within the permanent location. She says, “I’m excited to see how it does, how it’s received and validating that potential so we can grow in that area moving forward.”
The increasing crossover of beauty, wellness, food and beverage—today, it’s easy to find collagen or ashwagandha as a key ingredient in face masks, functional beverages and gummy vitamins—is right in Pop Up Grocer’s wheelhouse. Schildt says she views it “as a beauty and wellness store in one sense. It’s all contributive to the pursuit of a better, healthier, more enriched life.”
The store will also have a dine-in cafe offering influencer Emma Chamberlain’s Chamberlain Coffee and baked goods in partnership with Librae, and it has enough space for events and ongoing programming integrating brand founders. Pop Up Grocer champions brands by founders from underrepresented and under-resourced groups, including women (more than half of Pop Up Grocer’s brands are woman-owned), people of color and members of the LGBTQIA+ community.
In 2020, the company created the Pop Up Grocer Fund to support emerging consumer packaged goods brands. It dedicates 5% of in-store sales to the fund. As for Pop Up Grocer’s own funding, Schildt declined to share details of how much the company has raised to date.
Schildt looks forward to having founders be part of the consumer experience at Pop Up Grocer’s permanent location, which is expected to be joined by additional permanent locations in the future. “That’s how we want to differentiate ourselves from any other grocery concept,” she says. “We really want to do everything we can to help bring the products and the stories behind them to life.”
