Grocery stores emerged from the pandemic as in-demand assets, and an international investor is betting big on that trend locally.

Germany-based Deka Immobilien has shelled out nearly $54.3M to acquire the Whole Foods Santa Monica, JLL announced Thursday. The Whole Foods is the only tenant of the roughly 29K SF building at 2121 Cloverfield Blvd. It has a triple net, long-term lease at the property, where it has been a tenant since 2017.

The sale, which closed in November but was just announced this week, works out to about $1,830 per SF, marking a 2021 retail record for Los Angeles on a per SF basis, according to The Real Deal.

JLL represented the seller, Santa Monica-based Tooley Interests LLC. Deka Immobilien acquired the asset for its real estate fund, Deka-ImmobilienNordamerika.

“Since grocery stores are experiencing record sales, we were drawn to this stand-alone, single-tenant Whole Foods Market, as it is the perfect investment for a long-term investor,”  Deka Immobilien U.S. President Driss Oualkadi said in a statement.

“This asset’s established and necessity-based footprint, combined with a long-term lease in the heart of Santa Monica, is an ideal example of the opportunities we seek to acquire as we enter into 2022,” Oualkadi added.

The JLL Retail Capital Markets team was led by Managing Directors Gleb Lvovich, Geoff Tranchina and Bryan Ley and Senior Director Danial Tyner.

Lvovich said in a statement that the sale was a sign that there is “continued demand for net-lease real estate in strong locations with credit and a durable business.”

Another major grocery sale took place in September, when an Amazon Fresh location in Westchester sold for $35M. The top LA retail sale of the year occurred in November, when Canadian developer Onni Group paid $136M for Burbank Town Center, a roughly 1M SF shopping complex on Magnolia Boulevard.