Stocking a Beach House in North Myrtle Beach: Where to Shop, and What a BJ’s Would Change

Every family that rents a house on this coast runs the same errand. The cars come off Highway 31 around three in the afternoon, somebody gets the key, the children are already asking about the water, and then one adult looks around the kitchen and realizes there is no coffee, no paper towels, no trash bags, and nothing at all for breakfast. Somebody has to go back out. That drive, and how long it takes, shapes more of a beach week than anyone expects when they are booking in January.

It is also a question that may be about to change. In early November, BJ’s Wholesale Club submitted preliminary plans to the City of North Myrtle Beach for a store of roughly 106,600 square feet on the corridor between Champions Boulevard and South Carolina Highway 90. Nothing has been approved and no opening date exists, but if it goes forward it would be the first warehouse club anywhere on the north end of the Grand Strand.

What follows is the practical version for anyone renting here: where the groceries actually are today, how long each run really takes from the four beach sections, how families who come every year handle the first afternoon, and what would genuinely shift if that filing turns into a building.

The First Afternoon Problem

A rental house is not a hotel, and that is mostly the point. You get a kitchen, a washing machine, room for everyone, and the freedom to eat breakfast on a deck instead of in a lobby. What you also get is the responsibility for supplying all of it, and a week’s worth of groceries for ten people is not a convenience-store run.

The families who have been coming here for years have mostly solved this, and they have solved it in one of two ways. Either they shop on the way in, stopping at a full supermarket before they ever reach the beach, or they send one or two adults out on the first evening while everyone else unpacks. The households that have not solved it tend to spend half of Sunday in a parking lot on Highway 17 with a cart the size of a small boat, and that is a beach afternoon nobody gets back.

Where the North End Actually Shops

North Myrtle Beach is better supplied than visitors expect, as long as you know which store does which job. Boulineau’s IGA on Sea Mountain Highway in Cherry Grove is the one locals send people to first, and it is less a grocery store than a north-end institution: groceries on one side, a deli, beach supplies, souvenirs, and the kind of place where a family staying in Cherry Grove Beach can handle a forgotten boogie board and a gallon of milk in the same trip.

For a genuine full-size supermarket shop, the Publix at Coastal North Town Center on Highway 17 is the anchor of the north end, and it is the one most families end up using for the big weekly load. Food Lion keeps several locations through the city, which makes it the sensible choice for a mid-week top-up rather than a full provisioning run, and the Walmart Supercenter on Highway 17 handles the everything-else list — beach chairs, sunscreen, a cooler, a phone charger somebody left in Ohio.

Where you are staying changes the math more than people expect. Guests in Ocean Drive sit closest to the Highway 17 corridor and the Main Street side of town. From Crescent Beach and Windy Hill at the southern end, you are closer to Barefoot Landing and have the shortest run south toward Myrtle Beach. Cherry Grove at the north tip is the quietest place to wake up and the longest drive to anything large.

The Warehouse Club Gap

Here is the part that surprises people. The Grand Strand has three warehouse clubs, and all three of them are in Myrtle Beach. Costco and Sam’s Club have both operated there for years, and BJ’s opened its first Horry County location on Las Palmas Drive in February 2025. Not one of them is on the north end.

For a family that buys in bulk at home and expects to do the same on vacation, that means a committed trip. Thirty minutes each way is the optimistic version, taken on a weekday morning using Highway 31 rather than Highway 17. On a Saturday in July, with the whole coast turning over its rentals at once, an hour each way is closer to the truth. Add the shopping itself and a warehouse run consumes most of a day.

That is the gap the BJ’s filing would close. The proposed site sits on the inland corridor near Champions Boulevard and Highway 90, which is the same stretch that carries families to the North Myrtle Beach Park and Sports Complex and connects the beach sections to Highway 31. For anyone staying north of Barefoot Landing, a club there would turn a half-day expedition into a twenty-minute errand. Our news coverage of the BJ’s filing has the square footage, parking count and current status.

Your Options, Side by Side

Drive times are honest estimates for ordinary conditions rather than published figures, and summer Saturdays stretch all of them. The BJ’s row describes a proposal, not a store you can shop in today.

Provisioning a Beach House Without Losing a Day

The single most useful habit is shopping before you arrive rather than after. Families driving down Highway 501 or Highway 9 pass full supermarkets well before they reach the water, and a stop there costs forty-five minutes on a day that is already a travel day. A stop after check-in costs an evening on a day that was supposed to be a beach day. The clock is the same; the day it comes out of is not.

The second habit is splitting the list. Paper goods, drinks, snacks and breakfast are bulk items and belong in one large run. Seafood, produce and anything for a specific dinner are better bought the day you intend to cook them, which is also how you end up at a local market instead of a warehouse aisle. The Grand Strand’s seafood is worth buying fresh, and the family that commits to one big dinner at the house with shrimp bought that morning usually remembers it better than the restaurant meals.

The third is knowing what your rental already has. Kitchens in our oceanfront homes are equipped for real cooking, and the larger houses carry the pots, the grill and the counter space to feed a dozen people without anyone standing in a hallway with a plate. An oceanfront condo suits a smaller group and a lighter shop. Checking the kitchen inventory before you leave home saves buying a second set of baking sheets you will abandon on Saturday.

For groups who intend to cook most nights, it is worth filtering by what the house gives you rather than by the view alone. Our properties with pools and marsh and channel homes tend to be the ones where families settle in and stay put, which is exactly the pattern that makes a big first shop pay for itself.

What a Club on the North End Would Change

Assume for a moment the filing becomes a building. The obvious effect is the one already described: bulk shopping stops being a trip to another city. For large groups and for the extended families who take a house for a full week, that is a meaningful change in how a vacation is organized, and it quietly makes the big house a better deal than the hotel block.

The less obvious effects are worth naming too. A store that size brings traffic to a corridor that already strains during tournament weekends at the sports complex, and anyone who has tried to leave a Saturday soccer event knows what that road does under load. There is also the fuel question. The rendering submitted with the plans carries gas station signage, and a competitively priced club station on the north end would change where visiting families fill up before the drive home.

None of it is settled. Preliminary plans change shape, shrink, stall, and sometimes disappear entirely, and this one has not been before the planning commission. What it does tell you is the direction the inland side of North Myrtle Beach is moving, which is the same direction it has been moving since the Carolina Bays Parkway opened up the land west of the beach sections. For visitors deciding how to fill the days between grocery runs, our guide to things to do in Myrtle Beach and the indoor rainy day guide are the places to start.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources: Myrtle Beach Sun News reporting by Maria Elena Scott, November 8, 2026; BJ’s Wholesale Club corporate announcement of the Myrtle Beach club opening, February 2025. Drive times are practical estimates and vary with season and traffic. Store hours and locations change — confirm with the retailer before you travel. Published November 2026.