Whole Foods opens downtown Jacksonville store with heavy local sourcing focus

Whole Foods Market will open its downtown Jacksonville store on May 21 at 1 Riverside Ave., giving the Brooklyn district a new premium-grocery benchmark right on the former Florida Times-Union campus. The 38,432-square-foot store is built around local sourcing, with more than 800 products from 115-plus Florida-based suppliers, a mix that could reset what shoppers in the market expect from specialty grocers on freshness, prepared foods and neighborhood identity.

The assortment was curated with help from Dustin Kennedy, Whole Foods Market’s forager for local and emerging brands, and the store will carry prepared foods, pizza, sushi, organic produce and Jacksonville-tied local items. Regular hours will run from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. daily, and the opening-day launch will begin at 8:00 a.m. on May 21. The first 300 shoppers will get a limited-edition tote and a Secret Saver card with offers up to $100 off, a move that should pack the store early and push plenty of social buzz through the market.

The location is part of One Riverside, a mixed-use development along the Acosta Bridge that has been taking shape for years on the demolished Florida Times-Union site. Local reporting has described the larger project as a $250 million development with apartments, a 600-car parking garage, Norikawa Japanese Restaurant, Solidcore Fitness Studio and additional retail. Fuqua Development first announced Whole Foods as the grocery anchor in April 2022, and earlier descriptions of the store put it at about 43,000 square feet. Jax Daily Record also reported an estimated $7.5 million tenant build-out for the grocery space.

For Trader Joe’s, the opening is worth watching less as a rival ribbon-cutting than as a signal of where grocery competition is tightening. A store that leans this hard into local supplier storytelling raises the bar for how specialty grocers present themselves to shoppers, especially in a downtown market where residential growth, retail density and pedestrian traffic are all part of the sales pitch. Jacksonville already has a Trader Joe’s at 11112 San Jose Blvd. in the Mandarin area, so the new Whole Foods adds another comparison point for customers weighing assortment, experience and the premium they are willing to pay. In a market like this, the competition is not just for baskets on opening day. It is for the expectations shoppers carry into every trip after that.