Weavers Way’s $8 million Germantown grocery store is finally open

For years, the Germantown-based members of Northwest Philly’s Weavers Way Co-op have had to travel north to shop at one of the grocery stores in which they hold a stake. Shopping at the closest one — the original Carpenter Lane store in Mount Airy — means navigating a two-story 3,000-square-foot rowhouse filled to the gills with goods and other customers (1,000 a day, on average). It’s charming but cramped.

Germantown shoppers will have room to spread out now that Weavers Way’s latest location, at the corner of Chelten Avenue and Morris Street, is officially open, two years after it was first announced. The 6,000-square-foot full-service grocery store includes a bulk goods section, fresh produce and dairy, prepared foods, a bakery case stocked with fresh-made bread and pastries, and a deli counter offering made-to-order sandwiches and bowls.

General manager Jon Roesser said the store’s larger footprint affords more than just a less-stressful shopping experience. “Because this store and [Weavers Way] Ambler are bigger, it allows us to get more flexible with the product mix. We can offer stuff at a lower price point, more conventional stuff — good-quality conventional stuff,” he said in an interview Tuesday, as workers finished stocking the shelves.

Besides hot roast chicken, store-brand olive oil, bulk cashews, frozen pizza, THC gummies, and houseplants, the store features a deep bench of local products: Dietz and Watson deli cuts, Milk Jawn ice cream, Merzbacher’s bread, beef and turkey from Ed Hipp’s in Olney, injera wraps from Germantown’s Salam Cafe, grab-and-go items from Moshe’s in North Philly, and salad greens grown on Weavers Way’s Henry Avenue farm at W.B. Saul Agricultural High School.

The store also feature products from fledgling businesses like candles from Philly-based Luminous Intentions and body scrubs from Oreland’s Natural Body Essentials. “These are super hyperlocal, very small vendors that have never retailed before and we work with them to get their products onto our shelves and hopefully then they can launch to other shelves,” said development director Kathleen Casey.

The co-op estimates that the Germantown store will see about 620 customers a day. The member-owned cooperative, founded in 1973, has more than 1,400 members in the 19144 zip code. (Only Mount Airy claims more — about 3,000 members.) You do not need to be a member to shop at Weavers Way, though working members are eligible for a 5% discount on purchases.

The new store employs 40 workers, most of whom live within walking distance, according to Roesser and Casey. One of them is prepared foods manager Asia Simmons, who has lived in Germantown for five years. “There weren’t a lot of options in this neighborhood for fresh, local food, which is something that I strive for for myself and my family,” Simmons said. “It means a lot that I can actually walk here and get my groceries.”

While a Save-A-Lot and an IGA are within a few blocks of the new Weavers Way, Roesser and Casey pointed to recent market studies of the area that identified significant unmet demand for grocery stores, specifically those with healthy and organic options. The studies also indicated Germantown residents did most of their grocery shopping in other neighborhoods.

“They’re going up to City Avenue, they’re going to the ShopRite on Fox Street, they’re going up to the Weavers Way in Mount Airy or the Acme at Germantown and Sedgwick,” Roesser said, adding that Chelten Avenue sustained several grocery stores in the commercial corridor’s heyday.

When Weavers Way first announced the Germantown project, it originally targeted opening in summer 2023. The wait for the store’s completion lasted months longer than anticipated, but much of the neighborhood has been waiting even longer. Germantown residents have been vocal about the desire for a grocery store of this caliber for more than a decade. In 2011, a Fresh Grocer at the corner of Chelten and Pulaski Avenues closed after just five years, with the owner citing insufficient business and residents citing unsanitary conditions and poor-quality food in the store. Plans to redevelop the store’s lot and replace it with a Save-A-Lot and a Dollar Tree, among other retailers, rankled the community but were eventually carried out.

So it was a years-long answer to locals’ wishes when Weavers Way alerted members the new store’s doors had finally opened Wednesday afternoon. Starting Thursday, the store will be open daily 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Originally an Acme, the building at 328 W. Chelten Ave. had been used for social services in more recent years. It had been vacant since 2015 before Weavers Way signed a long-term lease in May 2022. The co-op ultimately purchased the property for $2.4 million in 2023, according to city records, accounting for the most substantial expense in the $8 million project. While Weavers secured numerous grants — from the city, state, and federal governments, as well as healthy-food-focused organizations like the Food Trust — to back the project, Roesser notes the main source of financing came from member loans, which will be repaid over time.

“We can’t attract private equity, Wall Street’s not interested in investing in a co-op,” Roesser said. “We could not do this without members investing in the business that they own.”

Weavers Way Germantown, 328 W. Chelten Ave., 215-843-1886, weaversway.coop