Whole Foods to open new Eatontown store July 29

Whole Foods Market will open a 40,000-square-foot store at 180 Route 35 South in Eatontown on July 29, giving the chain another foothold in New Jersey and its fourth store in Monmouth County. The site sits inside Monmouth Square, Kushner’s redevelopment of the former Monmouth Mall property, where the grocer is becoming one of the most visible retail anchors.

The Eatontown store is built around Whole Foods’ local sourcing pitch. The company says it will carry more than 1,000 local items from the Northeast, with John Lawson, Whole Foods’ forager for Local and Emerging Brands, helping line up products for the shelves. Among the items named for the store are quinoa crisps from Undercover Snacks, coffee from Paper Plane CoffeeCo. and pasta sauce from Hoboken Farms. The seafood counter will add fishmonger service along with ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat meals, with selections described as sustainable wild-caught or Responsibly Farmed. Whole Foods has also said the store will have a Jersey Shore-inspired design.

Opening day starts at 8 a.m., and the store will keep regular hours of 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. The first 300 customers in line will get a limited-edition Eatontown tote bag and a Secret Saver coupon worth up to $100 off. Shoppers will also see samples from Palazzone 1960 and Paper Plane CoffeeCo. as the company tries to turn the opening into a traffic draw as well as a new neighborhood grocery stop.

Monmouth Square itself is a large bet on the Eatontown site. Kushner lists the project as under development with 1,000 residential units and about 920,000 retail square feet. Local reporting has described it as a roughly $500 million redevelopment of the old mall parcel, and Kushner broke ground there on May 9, 2024. The developer later secured $415 million in construction loans from Fortress and Rithm Capital to keep the project moving.

The Eatontown opening also fits Whole Foods’ wider local supply strategy. The company says its Local Producer Loan Program, founded in 2006, has provided over 408 loans totaling roughly $34 million, and its local-foraging network now works with more than 6,500 local vendors across North America. In New Jersey, that strategy has helped the chain keep expanding store by store rather than by making one-off moves.