MOM’s Organic Market is moving to a much larger property at College Park’s Hollywood Shopping Center in the coming months, where REI used to be. This location will be about 27,500 square feet, more than three times the size of the current 8,000-square-foot location in the same shopping center.
MOM’s Organic Market CEO Scott Nash said the new College Park location will have a lounge, bakery, cafe and pinball room.
Many of the market’s locations, including those in Rockville and Hampden, also include a cafe: Naked Lunch, which serves organic, vegetarian options.
The College Park location will also have a Witches’ Brew Cafe, which will offer a large tea selection, Nash said. The only other Witches’ Brew Cafe is at the Hampden location but is more focused on coffee, Nash said.
[Read more: MOM’s Organic Market will move to College Park’s former REI site]
Nash said organic bread will be baked fresh from scratch at the expanded location’s bakery every day. The lounge will be next to the bakery and the Naked Lunch, he said, and will lead to an area with his personal collection of pinball machines.
Nash said he grew up in the area playing pinball games on and near the University of Maryland’s campus, and that this was a way to tip his hat to the “college pinball heritage.”
At the expanded location, MOM’s has the space to try out new things they haven’t done at other locations, Nash said, such as a larger tea selection at Witches’ Brew Cafe and the pinball room. When REI moved out of the shopping center more than a year ago, he said MOM’s took the opportunity to move into the larger space a few doors down.
“They’ve struggled with the limited amount of space they have at the current location,” College Park Mayor Patrick Wojahn said. “Expanding gives them the opportunity to do additional things.”
MOM’s Organic Market locations are usually close to 15,000 square feet, Nash said, and the current College Park location, which is the second store the company opened, is the smallest out of the company’s 18 locations.
“It’s a good store,” Nash said. “It’s always been a good store but as the industry has grown, it’s become too small.”
The new location at the Hollywood Shopping Center will be about 27,500 square feet, the Carrollton Enterprises website says. Wojahn said the move will make MOM’s Organic Market the anchor tenant of the shopping center.
[Read more: College Park-UMD partnership survey outlines midtown development potential]
The College Park location was the second MOM’s Organic Market, College Park City-University Partnership executive director Eric Olson said. It has developed a loyal customer base and become a successful local institution since it opened in 2000, he said.
Nash said the success of the College Park location makes it easier to test out their new ideas. It’s less risky of a venture, and because it has a lot of traffic it’s easier to measure results, he said.
Ryan Chelton, College Park economic development coordinator, said last month that the store was issued permits relating to the store’s aisles and cash registers and is slowly moving along.
The new, larger location has a tentative opening date in June, Nash said, because the space’s concrete floor was slanted and needed to be redone, which caused some delays.
CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, a previous version of this story contained a photo of Yes! Organic Market with a caption identifying it as MOM’S Organic Market. The photo and caption have been updated.