Rockville-based MOM’s Organic Market will open a store in Severna Park: its 11th store in Maryland and its first in Anne Arundel County.
MOM’s has signed a lease for 12,000-square-feet in Continental Realty Corporation’s Park Plaza, at 550 Ritchie Highway, and will open the store late this year or early 2025.
Park Plaza is anchored by Planet Fitness and Five Below. It has 55 retail tenants, including restaurants. Continental Realty said more than 52,000 vehicles pass the center daily via Ritchie Highway.
“After surveying the corridor, it became clear that Park Plaza is the main shopping hub in this section of Anne Arundel County, and the obvious place to establish a presence in this fast-growing and highly-dense area,” said MOM’s chief financial officer Amir Poustinchi.
MOM’s founder Scott Nash launched his organic produce business as a home delivery service out of his mother’s Beltsville garage in 1987. The chain has grown to 25 locations in six states and D.C.
MOM’s goes beyond just selling organic products, sustainable seafood and meat and poultry free of hormones and antibiotics.
It was the first grocery store to ban disposable plastic bags in 2005, and was the first retail chain in the country to ban plastic bottled water in 2010. All of its stores have been powered by 100% renewable energy since 2005.
Nash also gained attention in 2019 after he and his family ate food items for a year that were past their expiration dates or “best by” dates, with hopes of proving that random labels don’t represent freshness and contribute to Americans wasting billions of dollars of good food every year.
