Pop Up Grocer

Founded in 2019 by Emily Schildt — a CPG branding veteran and former Director of Digital Engagement at Chobani — Pop Up Grocer started as a series of 30-day activations in cities across the US, spotlighting a curated selection of emerging food, beverage, home, beauty, and pet brands in visually distinctive, Instagram-designed environments. The permanent Greenwich Village location opened March 2023, the brand's first fixed address after nine touring pop-ups. The 1,500-square-foot store carries 100–150 SKUs at any given time, rotating quarterly, alongside an in-house café. Schildt describes the experience as closer to a museum visit than a grocery run: "We can be, at once, a one-time and a routine destination for discovery." Pop Up Grocer operates on an explicit inversion of the traditional grocery model. Schildt has called it "advertiser-first retailer." Brands pay a showcase fee for shelf placement because the store functions primarily as a launch and visibility platform, not a volume channel. Getting into a national retailer like Target or Kroger requires a sales team, significant capital, and months of patience; getting into Pop Up Grocer puts a brand in front of influential shoppers and retail buyers in a high-foot-traffic Manhattan corner, fast. One early example: Canadian brand Wholly Veggie was featured in a Pop Up Grocer Austin activation in 2020, caught the attention of Whole Foods buyers in the city, and ended up in national distribution. For any retailer thinking about how to surface new brands and build a discovery culture in-store, Pop Up Grocer is a working proof of concept — small, curated, and built entirely around the moment of finding something new.