Balducci’s Food Lovers Market is back in McLean with a fresh look and more floor space for shoppers to explore.
After a six-month renovation, the gourmet grocery store, known for its prepared dishes, fresh seafood and locally sourced meats, hosted a grand re-opening ceremony last Friday (Sept. 13) to showcase the extensive remodel.
Located at 6655 Old Dominion Drive in the McLean Square shopping center, dozens of customers browsed the store to live saxophone music, while local officials, including Virginia State Sen. Jennifer Boysko, Del. Rip Sullivan, and Dranesville District Supervisor Jimmy Bierman, watched a worker break apart a large Parmesan cheese wheel.
The revamped storefront boasts several new amenities, including enhanced produce departments with organic options and a generally wider range of products, more premium wines and beers, expanded grocery, dairy and frozen selections, a larger specialty cheeses and olives section, and a new meat and seafood counter with aged and frozen options.
Albertsons, the store’s parent company and owner of Safeway and ACME Markets, leased two adjacent spaces that were previously vacant, increasing the store’s overall square footage.
Arthur Goncalves, Balducci’s director of merchandising, says that what truly separates the grocer from its competitors is its commitment to made-from-scratch prepared foods.
“Most of the places you walk into a store, [if] you see a sandwich that was packaged today, it has an expiration of the next day or two days later; ours is one day,” he told FFXnow. “So, it’s made fresh every single day. It’s just things that we do here that you’re not gonna find in most stores in the area.”
Balducci’s has three stores in the D.C. area, including ones in Alexandria and Bethesda. There are seven locations nationwide, with the others mostly concentrated in the northeast in Westchester County, New York.
The store operates daily from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. and offers curbside pickup as well.
