The Modular Grocery Store

Every Lego city needs a place where Minifigures can buy their food and their clothes. Welcome to the Modular Grocery Store!

On the first floor on the left you can find the name giving Grocery Store called „Food + Co.“ with detailed interior that encompasses the basic needs for Minifigures regarding food, bathroom and kitchen utensils – all stored on different shelves. Furthermore, there is a cash register and a security camera to ensure that no one can steal. On the back side is a small break room for the employee with a coffee machine and some storage.

As a special feature the entrance doors open and close automatically when you turn the large „O“ of the brick-built shop sign on the outside. To ensure aesthetics the entire mechanism is nicely covered up (also when the other modules are removed).

Next to the Grocery Store is an Ice-Cream Shop that sells scoops of different flavors as well as soft-ice coming from their own soft-ice machine.

Both buildings are separated by a small alley that leads to the back side of the model. On the right side is a small customer toilet for guests of the Ice-Cream Shop. On the left side, the stairs lead up to the second floor. But right before them is a secret door where a crook can hide from the police.

Coming up the second floor you directly face the Clothes Shop which is advertised already on the front side of the building. It features a shelf for pants, a rotating clothes rack, some busts with head gear and an antique clock. Of course, a dresser and a standing mirror are included so Minifigures can check out their new look.

Passing the Clothes Shop you arrive at the terrace of the Ice-Cream Shop along with a small booth that sells coffee. They serve both, Espresso and filtered coffee, freshly brewed, which neatly goes along with the ice-cream. A grape vine, that originates from a hole in the floor and grew along the building side, provides a natural green roof for the terrace, so the Minifigures can enjoy their coffee and ice-cream protected from the sun in a relaxing and beautiful environment.

On the top floor you can find a cozy apartment that is fully furnished. It features a bathroom with sink and mirror, a toilet, a washing-machine, a shower and some drawers. The main room is separated into a kitchen and a living area. The kitchen is equipped with a sink, a stove, a fridge, several cupboards, and a coffee machine. The living area features a sleeping sofa, which can be transformed into a bed, a little desk with a type writer and a bookshelf.

You can tell the owner loves nature from the various flowers spread over the apartment. To relax, the apartment offers access to a private little balcony above the terrace of the Ice-Cream Shop. There your Minifigures can drink a coffee and read a book on the relaxing chair in the shade of a parasol.

Moreover on the outside you can find a phone booth, an ATM and a bench to sit down and relax.

The model features:

A Grocery Store, a Clothes Shop, an Ice-Cream and Coffee Shop with a terrace, as well as a cozy apartment with balcony.
Both buildings are separated via an alley that provides access to the backside of the model and features a small hide-out for a criminal
All floors and rooms are fully furnished and tiled-off (with single studs to pose Minifigures)
Minifigure access to all floors including the roof
All sides are correctly colored (fitting to the front side) to provide a harmonic exterior.
Automatic doors to enter the Grocery Store
Fold-out sleeping couch that transforms into a bed
10 Minifigures (Grocery Store owner, Clothes Shop vendor, apartments owner, ice-cream vendor, waitress, crook, a police woman and 3 customers)
5 animals: 2 blue birds, a squirrel, a dog and a rat.
Interfaces to other modular buildings on both sides

The set encompasses in total exactly 4000 parts and 10 Minifigures.

The dimensions of the set are: 26.8 cm (10.6 inch) width, 26.8 (10.6 inch) length and 31.4 cm (12.4 inch) height. Its total weight is 3050 grams.

It features 1 sticker (mirror of the clothes shop) and (excluding Minifigure parts) 79 printed parts.

The idea was to provide the Lego city with a new modular that covers some basic needs of the Minifigures, which have not been addressed so often in the past: Buy groceries and clothes! The target was to have a model that is both, playable and displayable, while still looking like Lego and providing a certain robustness. The accommodation of the different stores and building parts in combination with the small alley and the crook hide-out invite for many stories and Minifigure display options. A special gimmick of this building are the automated doors of the grocery store that provide a new option to enter buildings in your Lego city.

A thing that I find a bit sad with modular buildings, is that the stairs required for „realistic“ Minifigure access to all levels take away a lot of the interior space, when placed inside the building. Therefore I placed them on the outside profiting from the fact that I could include many more interior details and furniture.

The roof is still an open space (due to the part-count limitation) but allows to add your own ideas to customize the building for you. Maybe someone will plant a roof-top garden, or someone opens a roof-top bar. It is totally up to you and your creativity (and your parts collection :) ).

I hope you enjoy my project! You can find more pictures on my Instagram @SPACE_PIRATE_KNIGHT

If you want to see it become reality, please share and support it. Thank you!