Weavers Way Co-op in Chestnut Hill is moving to the former Iron Hill Brewery nearby
Weavers Way Co-op will move its Chestnut Hill location two doors down to a larger space to meet a growing demand.
Weavers Way Co-op will move its Chestnut Hill location to the former Iron Hill Brewery, the community-owned grocer announced Friday.
“We are bursting at the seams in our current space,” store manager Ann Marie Arment said in a news release. “The opportunity to spread out and improve customer access and back-of-house operations was too hard to pass up.”
The store plans to relocate, just two doors down on Germantown Avenue, to meet growing demand and to better accommodate shoppers, Arment said. The move will provide more space, which will also allow the co-op to expand its bulk foods section and produce sections, she noted. Weavers Way also plans to bring back the hot bar, which it shuttered during the pandemic.
Arment said in an interview shoppers at the “small but mighty” store have gotten used to doing the “excuse me, pardon me” dance as they navigated grocery carts and strollers down its narrow, winding aisles.
The Chestnut Hill location has exceeded expectations with annual sales of about $14 million and about 1,000 transactions per day, said general manager Jon Roesser.
But as it’s grown, the location has also posed challenges, Roesser said. The building has little backstock area, often requiring workers to load goods directly from the truck to the shelves.
The new location will remedy that issue and will also be ADA compliant, unlike the current one, Roesser said. It will add about 900 square feet, and will have an open floor plan “with better customer flow and access” similar to the co-op’s Germantown location, Roesser said.
The move also will breathe new life into a space previously occupied by Iron Hill Brewery, which abruptly closed all of its locations last September and declared Chapter 7 liquidation bankruptcy.
The co-op signed a 20-year lease with Acadia Realty Trust to secure the new building, Roesser said. The co-op plans to install equipment and renovate the former Iron Hill property before moving in.
“We’re going to apply for demolition permits with the idea of doing the interior demo in January. That’s the easy part,” Roesser said.
Roesser said construction should start in May 2027 with a plan to complete the project by mid-October, though the project could potentially stretch into January 2028.
The hard part, he said, will be closing down the current store for a few days and moving everything over to the new location.
“Our goal right now is to get open before the next holiday season,” Roesser said.
At the co-op Sunday, shoppers said they’ve gotten used to its quirky locations. Rory Phimister even remembered when the Mount Airy location was in the basement of Summit Presbyterian Church.
But as he navigated he way through checkout, Phimister said he’s excited about the larger space.
“It’s a good sign, said his friend Lizanne McGuinn. ”It means it’s doing really well."
