Landmark Hispanic market in Jamaica Plain to be replaced by a Whole Foods

When can we get a Starbucks near HydeSquare/Jackson/RoxXing/etc? Or any coffee shop? Only things around are Butterfly Coffee (which is awesome, but gets crowded) and City Feed (zzzz...)

Flat Black, are you listening?

I wish they'd replace the Stop and Shop with WF (or even better, TJs) and keep Hi-Lo.

Whole Foods has better prices than Stop and Shop and Shaws on most identical items. They just don't carry the cheapest of cheap varieties at all; they don't sell anything with HFCS or trans fat. For instance, Amy's soups are cheaper there than anywhere else, but they don't carry 33-cent-per-can tomato soup made of corn syrup and MSG, which means that the cheapest soup available is going to be more than at other stores. It makes sense that a lot of the dairy-free and such items are going to be less at WF, since they do more volume of this stuff.

It's really too bad that their marketing and reputation and whatnot is that they're expensive. I work with a number of low-income families who are either trying special diets for their kids with allergies/medical issues or just wanting to eat healthy, and they'll tell me how they're committed to doing this, but frustrated that a particular item was so expensive at S&S. When I tell them that some of these items are cheaper at WF, they're surprised and said they hadn't even gone in there (or in TJs) because they'd been told those were the stores for rich people where everything costs twice as much.

TJs would be better, I agree.

TJs and Whole Foods do both take SNAP (food stamps), which is what people use to buy their groceries from day to day. The Boston-area WFs and TJs don't take WIC, which is the program that gives checks to buy certain foods (cereal, formula, etc.) that families generally cash in once a month or so. There are locations in other places that take WIC because the community has lobbied them to do so.

I'd be behind anything convincing any store to take WIC, but this really isn't such an issue as if a store refused to take food stamps. Generally a family will have several hundred dollars per month on their food stamps card that allows them to buy just about anything that's considered food, whereas their WIC check for the month might have a few cans of infant formula, some cheese, a box of Cheerios, a bag of carrots.

EDIT: Oh, and I actually see it as a plus when more people are using their SNAP card at higher-profile stores. At many many convenience-type stores and mom-and-pop-type stores, the owners are willing to sell people cigarettes and other non-food items with their SNAP card, ringing it up as food. This isn't as likely to happen at a large grocery store. In general I'm in favor of locally owned family businesses, but the abuse of SNAP is rampant, so I'm all for people using it at places where the store owners are more likely to be responsible about it.

i'm sure you would consider my wife and me to be yuppies or hipsters or whatever, we have multiple CSA memberships and ride bikes and love diversity and localism, etc., but i have never shopped at a whole foods. I think the HiLo closing sucks, but partially because its great sign and facade will be homogenized into the generic whole foods strip mall architecture. We will continue to get staples at harvest and on the weekends get zipcars and shop at roche brothers or russo's.

I have no delusions that the whole foods will be any less than incredibly successful, but believe me there are plenty of people in JP who simply won't shop at a corporate chain.

Harvest has the stuff WF sells, just less variety in a smaller footprint. Yet, I wonder whether WF is trying to lead the demographics in Northern JP a bit too much. The traditional organic and health-food types already have what they need in Harvest. The Hyde Square area does not have nearly the disposable income level of the Cambridge and Newton abutters of WF.

If this acquisition is typical of higher end chain ones, I'd bet Hi-Lo is profitable enough, but that WF made the owners an offer that dwarfed their current profits for years out.

The space is a very short distance from wealthier Brookline and much, much cheaper than plopping a store there. I bet WF is counting on those who find it inconvenient to drive to the WF behind the TJs off Memorial Drive.

I'm also they miscalculated on this one.

I primarily use it for picking up things I've forgotten or end up needing on a whim. Much more likely to find what I need there than at City Feed (which is so ridiculously overpriced I don't even bother trying to purchase anything there anymore) or the Stop & Shop at Jackson (which might possibly be the worst Stop & Shop in existence).

I think Harvest will continue to do as well as it is- It will be over a mile away from the Whole Foods and it will remain the more convenient option for many of the shoppers that already use it (I usually tie it in with a stop at Polka Dog and I'm quite sure the Whole Foods will be a fucking nightmare during the first few months it is open- don't want to deal with that at all)

Niche market, Hillary? It's not coincidence or pretense that Hyde Square bills itself as Boston's Latin Quarter. The niche is is the yuppie and hipster interlopers who visit or rent nearby.

didnt even think of the traffic, christ that is going to be a shitshow. Think of the hawks looming in their volvo SUVs weekend afternoons in Brookline, lined up on Washington Street to get a chance to squeeze into the parking lot and wait for a spot to open. On Google Maps I count approximately 130 spaces in that lot. At Hi-Lo, despite the vastness of that lot there are only 50 spots due to its odd geometry. I'm assuming that WF will tear down the existing building and build new, and they may be able to site plan in a way that squeezes 15 more spots out of it. But even then, that doesn't seem like enough to sustain a Whole Foods--will that part of JP go parking permit on the streets? I don't know, it will definitely become an issue.