Until now, a Whole Foods trip from anywhere in Manatee County meant a drive south to the store near University Town Center in Sarasota. That changes on Thursday, Nov. 5, when the county's first Whole Foods Market opens at 7295 State Road 64 E., inside the Marketplace at Heritage Harbour.
The plaza opened in 2019 with a single anchor, Costco. Seven years later the leasing plan looks different. The tenants planned next are coffee, juice, bowls, sushi and ice cream. Those are businesses you stop at for twenty minutes. A big warehouse store is somewhere you plan a whole morning around. Put the Whole Foods opening together with that pipeline and the corner of I-75 and SR 64 now covers a lot of the routine that used to send east Bradenton south on the interstate.
Two Thursdays, Two Openings
The current wave started a week ago. Chick-fil-A opened at 7283 State Road 64 E. on Thursday, Oct. 15, near the plaza's entrance. It runs Monday through Saturday from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. The owner-operator is Jonathan Ith, who used to run the Chick-fil-A in the Creekwood plaza off State Road 70.
"My mission for this restaurant is to be a light in Bradenton, creating a place where our team members can grow and our guests feel care for," Ith said in a news release quoted by the Bradenton Herald. For the opening, the restaurant also announced a $25,000 donation to Feeding Tampa Bay and joined the Chick-fil-A Shared Table program, which sends surplus food to local nonprofits.
Whole Foods opens two weeks after this post goes up. The Bradenton Herald reported the basics:
- Size: 42,000 square feet
- Hours: 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily
- Local stock: more than 450 items sourced in Florida
- Place in the chain: the 40th Whole Foods in Florida
On opening day, the first 300 people in line get a limited-edition Bradenton tote bag and a Secret Saver coupon worth up to $100. Coffee comes from Buddy Brew Coffee. The company is also giving food and money to Good Neighbors, a food pantry that regularly picks up surplus food from local Whole Foods stores.
Whole Foods started building here in 2024, so the opening has been a long time coming.
How One Warehouse Store Became a Shopping Center
Costco opened as the anchor in 2019. Since then the plaza has added, roughly in order of how often you might stop:
- Target, for the everyday basket
- Academy Sports + Outdoors and Hobby Lobby, for the specialty trip
- Panda Express and Cava, for a quick meal
- LongHorn Steakhouse, Miller's Ale House and Seasons 52, for a sit-down dinner
Most of those first tenants are destinations. You drive to Costco or Academy because you need something there, and you probably don't go twice in a week. Whole Foods is a different kind of store. It's a grocery stop, and a grocery stop is a weekly habit. That matters for everything planned around it.
The Next Wave Is Built for Short Visits
Look at the tenants the Bradenton Herald has reported as coming later. Almost every one is quick-service food, coffee or a small specialty shop. The Herald's Oct. 6 article still listed Mister O1, Cold Stone, Sephora, Lucky Goat and Qdoba as future openings, and its May report added three more from the developer's leasing plan. None of the reports below gives an opening date.
| Tenant | What it is | What's been reported |
|---|---|---|
| Lucky Goat Coffee Co. | Coffee | Space at 7227 State Road 64 E., Unit 104; no opening date announced as of December 2025 |
| Pure Green Juice Bar | Juice bar | Planned for a four-unit building next to Whole Foods |
| Fresh Kitchen | Fast-casual bowls | Planned for a five-unit building north of LongHorn Steakhouse |
| U-Yee Sushi & Grill | Sushi | Planned for the same building north of LongHorn |
| Mister O1 Extraordinary Pizza | Pizza | Lease signed; no opening date announced as of September 2025 |
| Cold Stone Creamery | Ice cream | 1,588-square-foot lease next to Mister O1 |
| Qdoba Mexican Eats | Fast-casual Mexican | Lease signed; no opening date announced as of September 2025 |
| Sephora | Beauty retail | Construction paperwork filed for a 5,000-square-foot space; no opening date announced |
Where these tenants are going tells you as much as who they are. Pure Green is slated for the building beside Whole Foods, so a juice stop sits right next to the grocery run. Fresh Kitchen and U-Yee Sushi & Grill are planned north of LongHorn, in the restaurant part of the plaza. The Herald's May 2026 report said those last three came from a leasing plan shared by the developer, Edgewood Properties.
Chick-fil-A shows what the plaza's hours look like now. It opens at 6 a.m. That's two hours before Whole Foods unlocks its doors, and a 6 a.m. breakfast window had no place in a center built around warehouse shopping.
Where University Town Center Comes In
Before Nov. 5, the nearest Whole Foods for Manatee County was the store near University Town Center. That drive goes away.
Fresh Kitchen follows the same pattern. The Florida chain started in 2014 and has 17 locations around the state. One of them is at The Shoppes at University Town Center. Its menu is customizable bowls, and the Herald noted that most items are dairy- and gluten-free, vegan-friendly and made with no added processed sugar. If you've been driving to UTC for that kind of lunch, it's planned to land at the corner of I-75 and SR 64.
UTC is still the bigger shopping destination, and nothing in the Heritage Harbour plans changes that. What changes is the weekly loop. A grocery trip, a bulk run, a Target stop, and before long coffee and a quick lunch can all happen in one parking lot off SR 64. For anyone who lives near Heritage Harbour, the plaza is no longer a once-a-month Costco trip. It's starting to cover the errands you run every week.
Getting In and Out on SR 64
New traffic is arriving while work continues on the road itself. FDOT's project page for SR 64 resurfacing between Grand Harbour Parkway and Lena Road still lists the work as in construction, with an estimated finish of mid-2026. A June 30, 2026 traffic update from the Sarasota/Manatee MPO put completion at late summer. Check FDOT's project page for current lane conditions before planning around the Nov. 5 opening morning.
FDOT also lists work installing message signs, fiber and cameras at the I-75 interchanges with SR 64 and SR 70. Completion is expected in late 2026. The closure notice FDOT has posted for that job is a right-lane closure on eastbound SR 70 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., not on SR 64.
The Next Two Weeks
Here's how the calendar looks as of this Thursday, Oct. 22:
- Now: Chick-fil-A Heritage Harbour has been open a week, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
- Thursday, Nov. 5: Whole Foods opens at 8 a.m. The first 300 people in line get the tote bag and coupon, with Buddy Brew coffee while they wait.
- Still to come: Lucky Goat, Pure Green, Fresh Kitchen, U-Yee Sushi & Grill, Mister O1, Cold Stone, Qdoba and Sephora, with no opening dates reported.
One stretch of SR 64 now holds a warehouse store, a full grocery store and a quick-service breakfast spot. If the plans hold, the parking lot between them will fill in with places you stop at for coffee or a bowl.
If you're weighing how errands like these fit into daily life near Heritage Harbour, or which nearby neighborhoods put this corner of SR 64 closest, I'm glad to walk through it with you. Kelli Eggen knows this side of Bradenton well. Let's Connect.
