The city's newest Whole Foods debuts July 21st in Harlem at 125th Street and Lenox Avenue nearly five years after the grocer announced the new store. Sharing the shelf with LaCroix displays and organic avocados: local food makers and vendors from the Harlem community in the form of delicious drinks, tasty sauces and PIE.
Clinton Shabazz—better known as The Harlem Pie Man, a Harlem local who bakes out of the Hot Bread Kitchen Incubator—will sell pies in pecan, bean, apple and butternut squash varieties, which are baked each day and will be delivered to the store. Yemisi Awosan of Egunsi Foods—also operating out of the Incubator—makes West African soups that'll be available in the refrigerated section of the store in flavors including Egunsi (melon seed) and Obe Ata (West African tomato). Clean Plate Club, the third Incubator operation to debut at Whole Foods, will package its smoked Gouda mac-and-cheese to purchase at the store.
Two beverage purveyors from the area will be selling bottled drinks on-site. Jamaican-inspired limeades from Charmaine DaCosta's Limation will be available in watermelon, passion fruit and half-tea flavors, while Mohammad and Rahim Diallo will be bringing Ginjan—an African drink made with ginger, pineapple, lemon, vanilla, anise and cane sugar—to the drinks section.
Finally, Vy Higginsen—who grew up a block away from the new Whole Foods—will be selling Mama’s One Sauce, a multi-use marinade in mild, spicy and fire versions. A portion of each bottle sold will benefit Mama Foundation for the Arts, which provides free arts training to locals.
Whole Foods says it will be featuring almost 100 local products from more than two dozen suppliers in conjunction with Harlem Park to Park.
In case you somehow missed the news, Amazon recently acquired Whole Foods for a cool $13.7 billion.
