Mother’s Market and Kitchen opens new location in Corona del Mar

Corona del Mar has a new supermarket on East Coast Highway, courtesy of Mother’s Market and Kitchen, which opened its doors officially last week after reconstruction delays.

The market shares its space with a CVS Pharmacy, replacing a Smart and Final that closed in January. The market itself is smaller in scale — estimated to be around 5,000 square feet total — than other locations under its banner, but still offers a full grocery store in addition to traditional amenities including its organic juice bar.

Chief executive officer Dorothy Carlow said the Costa Mesa company had been eying the location since at least July 2020.

“We are an institution from a health and wellness standpoint in Orange County. This company has been around for 43 years. We believe that the more stores that we can put into community neighborhoods, the more we can fulfill our mission, which is essentially to provide access to organic and natural foods to everybody,” Carlow said in an interview Tuesday.

“When Smart and Final closed, Corona del Mar lost a grocery store in their community and we saw it as an opportunity,” said Carlow. “CVS was already slated and nobody could open a grocery store in 5,000 square feet or less, but my operating team and I have experience in working in small spaces. We said, ‘We’re going to do this. We’re going to figure out a way to do this.’”

Carlow, a Corona del Mar resident herself, said she is aware of the concerns of residents about the cost of food, but stressed that Mother’s Market is focused on ensuring accessibility to healthy and organic foods at a reasonable price point.

“We don’t think an organic salad should cost $16,” said Carlow. “You should be able to get an organic salad for lunch for under $10. Our mission is to be the ... everyman’s store. It shouldn’t be a specialty shop. You should be able to come back to our store every day and feel like you got high quality food at a value.”

The Corona del Mar location is the newest of the 11 Mother’s Market and Kitchen locations throughout Southern California. Carlow said the company plans to expand into Los Angeles County in the near future to provide to neighborhoods like West Hollywood, Echo Park and Atwater Village. Another location also recently opened in Sunset Beach this year.

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