Rockville-based grocer Mom’s Organic Market is coming to downtown Silver Spring, the grocer’s CEO confirmed to Bethesda Beat this weekend.
CEO Scott Nash confirmed in an email that the store will be at 8787 Georgia Ave. He estimated that the store will open in one and a half to three years.
“It’s a bit too early to give details, other than it’ll be one of our larger stores and will replicate the others,” he wrote.
The Washington Business Journal reported Friday that Mom’s had signed a lease in May with the developers Bozzuto and Stonebridge for a 17,320 square-foot-space in what will become a mixed-use development.
The property was formerly occupied by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission up until last month, when it moved to a new county government building in Wheaton.
Nash confirmed the size of the store.
In 2019, Nash told Bethesda Beat that Silver Spring was an area he was interested in for expansion.
Nash said in a phone interview on Sunday that he became interested in the property at 8787 Georgia Ave. after his friend Toby Bozzuto, the president and CEO of The Bozzuto Group, presented the space to him.
“We’ve pretty much got the D.C. area covered except for a few pockets, and Silver Spring is definitely a glaring pocket for us,” he said.
Nash said the Silver Spring store will be one story and will employ about 50. It will be one of Mom’s “flagship stores,” he said, and will include a bakery with freshly baked bread and sandwiches.
Mom’s specializes in organic produce and has adopted several environmentally friendly practices over the years, such as banning plastic bags and plastic water bottles.
Nash started Mom’s in 1987 at age 22 and opened his first store on Parklawn Drive in Rockville three years later.
It has expanded to include locations in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia and Washington, D.C. In Montgomery County, there are locations in Rockville and Gaithersburg.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Nash said the chain is still doing well financially and is preparing for an “aggressive expansion” period over the next two years, he said.
Nash said Mom’s opened a new store in the Philadelphia area last week. Another store is set to open outside New York City before the year is out, he said.
“With the restaurant industry pretty much shutting down, everyone was getting calories from their own kitchen,” he said. “It’s been a good year. [But] it’s been very unstable. We don’t know if we’re gonna hit a huge recession or a depression. We don’t know if online delivery is really gonna take off.”
“You see some grocery stores going dark where they’re only for delivery,” he said. “We’re never gonna do that. We’re a brick-and-mortar, four wall, experiential grocery.”
Dan Schere can be reached at daniel.schere@moco360.media