Nearly a decade has gone by since efforts formally began to reimagine the former Westbrooke Village shopping center in Shawnee.

It’s been even longer than that since the once-deteriorating shopping center has had its own grocery store.

Kansas-based Dillons left the shopping center nearly 20 years ago.

This week, the new-look retail plaza, now called Westbrooke Green, was anything but empty. Over the weekend, employees busily prepared goods like tortillas and conchas by hand, and customers grabbed groceries there for the first time in nearly two decades.

“They’re all loving it, and they all needed it,” said Eddie Musallet, owner of Fresh Market of Shawnee. “The neighborhood’s so happy that something is there.”

The new locally owned grocery store opened its doors in Shawnee last Wednesday, marking a new chapter for Musallet’s company and for the shopping center itself.

Fresh Market opened at 7405 Quivira Road

• The grocery store occupies a space at the Westbrooke Green shopping center, which is just off 75th Street and Quivira Road in Shawnee.
• Fresh Market is the first new tenant at the newly revamped center, since construction wrapped up there.
• The store is open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

The grocery store offers both “traditional” and international items

Customers at the grocery store can find a variety of grocery items, from fresh produce and seafood to spices and snacks.

“We did a lot more traditional American products in there than our other stores,” Musallet said, adding that the Shawnee store also has a bigger Asian goods section than their other stores.

The store also offers a bakery with sweets like cakes, conchas (traditional Mexican sweeet breads), cookies and doughnuts.

Fresh Market also has an ice cream counter (scooping ice cream from the owner’s ice cream brand, Frutopia) and a Picadeli salad bar, the latter of which Musallet said is a first for all El Mercado Fresco stores.

In addition to several stores in Kansas City (both the Kansas and Missouri sides), the company has one Johnson County store off 103rd Street and Metcalf Avenue in Overland Park.

“Our specialty is Hispanic stores, but we’re getting into more traditional (groceries),” Musallet said. “This store is like a hybrid. And we try to keep it at a good low price for the customer.”

Fresh Market will anchor the Westbrooke Green shopping center

The grocery store is the first officially announced tenant at the new-look center, though developers have teased other potential new tenants.

So far, that could include others like a barber shop, a sushi restaurant, a liquor store and a national pizza chain, to name a few.

“There’s a lot coming in, following us,” Musallet said. “It’s gonna start filling up pretty fast.”

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