Whenever you do your Shabbos shopping, the store you buy it from has to have it ready before you get there!

Seven Mile Market

Location: Baltimore, Maryland

At Seven Mile Market, the closer it gets to Shabbos, the busier it gets. According to Moshe Boehm, vice president of Seven Mile Market, “Everyone wants the freshest possible food for Shabbos, so people want to buy things as close to Shabbos as possible.”

When: Sunday the store has a few customers stocking up for the coming week. Monday and Tuesday the store is relatively quiet. By Wednesday things are starting to pick up for Shabbos, but hands down Thursday and Friday are way busier than the rest of the week.

The head cashier tries to get as many cashiers as possible for the Erev Shabbos crush. Lately there have been lots of staffing shortages (not enough people available to work) due to Covid and other illnesses, so if the store can’t get enough cashiers, they’ll get extra baggers to make things go faster.

A Heimish Environment

“Thursday evenings are full of teenage girls shopping for their mothers, and we see a lot of bochurim on Fridays. They’re all so polite and pleasant. It’s really something beautiful,” Moshe says. “It’s so nice to have a safe, heimish environment.”

People feel so safe and comfortable that women will often leave their carts with their pocketbooks inside while they go retrieve something from a different aisle. Even though there’s rarely any problem, Moshe encourages his customers to be safe rather than sorry.

Once, a customer placed an order on Friday morning for platters for a family simchah that Shabbos and forgot to pick them up. When closing time came and no one had picked up the platters, one of the managers brought them home with him so the person would still be able to get them from his home.

What’s Special for Shabbos?

Seven Mile Market has sushi platters available, a deli counter, and bakery open all week, but starting on Thursday, the departments prepare extra and different foods special for Shabbos. They offer delicious hot takeout on Thursdays and Fridays in addition to the regular supermarket items. The store managers do their best to make sure everything — like lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, bags and bags of pre-checked lettuce, barley, flour, dips, gefilte fish, kishke, chicken, cholent meat, and of course lots of desserts and nosh — is fully stocked for the crowds that will hit the store as Shabbos approaches.