I had the pleasure of attending the Healthy Living Market sneak peek tour last night with a slew of other local bloggers to see the future of what will be my favorite market ever. As we entered from the mall entrance (which will be across from Old Navy), there’s a large area that will be transformed into cafe seating for people to sit and enjoy food or coffee!
Within this market, there will be an in-house bake shop, juice bar, organic smoothie bar, lounge area for the espresso bar and so much more. The learning center, which is shown below, will be where they will teach cooking classes as well as demonstrations for the public.
We walked through the dairy section, where they’ll be sourcing local milk and eggs from various farms in this area. We were then brought over to the butchers station, which is something extremely unique and something we’ve desperately needed for quite some time. This will be a no waste butcher shop, where they’ll be doing all whole animal butchery. The process they go through to choose vendors to source their meat from is the best part – they visit the farms and spend time going through the animals’ feeding processes, look at their shelter and even visit the slaughter house in order to ensure that the process is humane and up to their standards. They’ll be offering meat including chicken, lamb, beef and pork. We also visited the seafood department, which will be full service just like the meat department.
We then moved to the produce section, where we were told how the Healthy Living Market adheres to national organic standards. This means that when products are purchased that are not organic, they’ll be brought to the store on separate trucks, stored in separate sections and will be merchandised separately.
We then were directed over to the bulk foods section, which I must admit I am the most excited about. This will include items such as grains, pastas, flour, trail mix, dried fruit, etc. They’ll have 6 bins dedicated to local flour and grains and 2 gluten free! There will also be a liquids table in the same area, where you can purchase honey, maple syrup and oil.
Another exciting area that we were shown was the space that will be home to Divine Wines, their wine store! In this space, they’ll have a tasting table and a huge variety of wines to choose from. Of course, because of NYS laws, the wine store had to be built as an extension, but it’s still easily accessible and will be extremely convenient.
Finally, we moved back to the cafe area, which will make up for 1/3 of the entire staff there. They’ll be producing baked goods every day, including fresh bread, cookies, pastries, cakes and more. The cafe will make hot food daily, have a salad bar, whole meals to go with vegan and gluten free options and more! I was also pretty pumped to hear that Uncommon Grounds will be providing 70 of their bagels every morning, fresh from their kitchen.
Finally, we moved on to what will be the cheese section. Ohhhh yesss. They’ll have imported, domestic and local cheese, which will be delightful for all the cheese lovers out there similar to myself.
So the big question remains – when is the Grand Opening? While they didn’t have an exact date yet, they’re aiming for mid March, which would be pretty awesome. As soon as I hear more, I’ll be sure to let you all know.
There’s some notes that I didn’t include in here, so if anyone has ANY questions, please feel free to email me and ask! I’ll try my best to answer them 🙂
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