New Whole Foods in Friendship Heights Is Nice. Will Rodman's Be Okay?

Whole Foods opens its newest DC area store tomorrow morning, just over the border into Maryland beyond the Friendship Heights metro stop (on Willard Ave, in Chevy Chase). It's going to be awfully nice. Will it hurt its local competitor, though?

First, the good stuff. The store, all 49,600 square-feet of it, is as appetizing as you might expect. They did a blogger preview dealie today (pretty groovy, I must say) and I got to check out the scene. How is this WF different from all others, we wondered?

There's a fresh pasta thing, run by some small business that provides for a few WF stores. The prepared foods area has a shish kabob station. The store creates about 185 jobs.

And the checkout line will be the good kind! Instead of having a dozen separate lines, it will all be two lines (express and regular). No more getting stuck behind that one really slow person. Team WF says it will likely take folks a bit of time to get used to it (the other stores in the area still use the old many-line format), but that people grow to embrace it.

I think the store will do alright with its location, even with some of the residential construction around it struggling to sell. There are a decent number of people who work within a few blocks, and a lot who shop in the area. You shop, you go to store. You work, you go eat lunch there instead of Booeymonger (but instead of Panera? That's tougher).

The two nearby WF locations (River Road and Tenleytown) will surely lose a bit of business (which will be much appreciated by Tenleytown shoppers). But they wouldn't be building the store if it weren't to get new business, and hey, I bet I will start buying some things there that I might have bought at other stores.

So which stores stand to lose business? There are four in the area that jump to mind. There are two nearby Safeways -- the one on Connecticut and the "super secret" one just off Wisconsin -- that don't stand out as superb or particularly busy. And then there's the Giant, literally just a three minute walk from the new WF. It's modern and spacious, but ridiculously empty. Perhaps these stores will lose at least some customers. (In the case of Giant, are there that many to lose?!)

Whole Foods bills itself as a different product from other stores, and presumably that's the right strategy -- the moment other stores convince customers that they too sell enough organics and gluten-frees and what have you, WF has a problem. The good news for the Safeways and Giants, then, is that if they aren't so much direct WF competitors, they ought not worry about the new WF, right?

And then there's Rodman's. It's a local independent chain with three locations, one of which is about 10 minutes walk south of the new store. Rodman's has been around a long time and has a loyal following. My worry is that it is also a 'gourmet' store; it has your usual groceries, yes, but it also packs in some slightly obscure stuff. Which is great. But that puts it in competition with Whole Foods, a battle it would lose -- were it not for that customer loyalty that's built up over decades.

Whole Foods prices on many items are in fact not bad. Almost anything that's store brand -- and that includes an awful lot -- is quite good. But that good fact for consumers could hurt Rodman's, which is never going to sell pecans or bulk dried cranberries as cheaply as WF does.

Rodman's has one last thing going for it, though: it is within the District, and the new WF is in Montgomery county. Rodman's has a very, very impressive beer and wine selection. The Tenleytown WF has beer (expensive!) and wine, but the new store, being in Montgomery, doesn't have any. Team Rodman's should feel lucky about that.

I'll probably be at the new Whole Foods here and there, perhaps a bit more than when I had to walk to Tenleytown. But I'll still go to Rodman's, too.

Tomorrow: One bargain that makes this Whole Foods different from the others.

Update: More on Whole Foods opening, including lots of pictures, from Till It's Done, Always a Northerner, Capitol Bites, Never Turn Down a Cupcake, and I Wanna Be a Domestic Goddess.