For people who live at or near the Abbotts Square building on the 200 block of South Street, it's been a pretty bleak couple of years. Almost all of the stores closed back in 2014 as the owners of the building prepared a 20K sqft space for Garden of Eden, a small grocery chain out of New York that amazingly describes itself as "a culinary Mecca for savvy shoppers who demand the finest products and ingredients at the best prices." Then nothing happened.
At the beginning of this year, we spotted some murals in the windows of the empty retail spaces, effectively distracting us from their continued vacancy. With some apparent construction inside, we were cautiously optimistic that something was happening but we weren't sure whether it was Garden of Eden or something else.
It turns out, there is indeed a tenant coming to this space but it ain't Garden of Eden. Instead, a different supermarket called Bfresh will be opening here, according to Supermarket News. Fresh Formats, the parent company of Bfresh, also owns the Everything Fresh market on the 1200 block of Walnut Street. It stands to reason that the new Bfresh will offer plenty of fresh foods (hence the name), and will somewhat resemble the Everything Fresh location, though with a much larger footprint. At this point, we don't even really care so much what will be filling the big empty space, we're just happy to learn that something is finally happening. For folks who have been to the Everything Fresh, should we be excited about the upcoming supermarket from the same company?