what time whole foods market open until today

1 ANSWERS

1. amomipais82
   

   Hi,
   Whole Foods Market was founded in Austin, Texas, when four local businesspeople decided the natural foods industry was ready for a supermarket format. Our founders were John Mackey and Renee Lawson Hardy, owners of Safer Way Natural Foods, and Craig Weller and Mark Skiles, owners of Clarksville Natural Grocery. The original Whole Foods Market opened in 1980 with a staff of only 19 people. It was an immediate success. At the time, there were less than half a dozen natural food supermarkets in the United States. We have grown by leaps and bounds since our first store opened.
   
   Pieces of the Whole
   Much of the growth of our company has been accomplished through mergers and acquisitions. The story of Whole Foods is incomplete without honoring these notable companies in their own right.
   
   Whole Foods Market
   Whole Food Company
   Wellspring Grocery
   Bread & Circus
   Mrs. Gooch's
   Fresh Fields
   Bread of Life
   Amrion
   Merchant of Vino
   Allegro Coffee
   WholePeople.com (e-commerce subsidiary)
   Nature's Heartland
   Food for Thought
   Harry's Farmers Market
   Select Fish
   Fresh & Wild
   Wild Oats© Markets
   Whole Foods Market
   The Early Years
   In 1978, twenty-five year old college dropout John Mackey and twenty-one year old Rene Lawson Hardy, borrowed $45,000 from family and friends to open the doors of a small natural foods store called SaferWay in Austin, Texas (the name being a spoof of Safeway, which operated stores under their own name in Austin at that time). When the couple got booted out of their apartment for storing food products there, they decided to simply live at the store. Since it was zoned commercial, there was no shower stall. Instead, they bathed in the Hobart dishwasher, which had an attached water hose.
   
   Two years later, John and Rene partnered with Craig Weller and Mark Skiles to merge SaferWay with their Clarksville Natural Grocery, resulting in the opening of the original Whole Foods Market on September 20, 1980. At 10,500 square feet and a staff of 19, this store was quite large in comparison to the standard health food store of the time.
   
   Less than a year later, on Memorial Day in 1981, the worst flood in 70 years devastated the city of Austin. Caught in the flood waters, the store's inventory was wiped out and most of the equipment was damaged. The losses were approximately $400,000 and Whole Foods Market had no insurance. Customers and neighbors voluntarily joined the staff to repair and clean up the damage. Creditors, vendors and investors all provided breathing room for the store to get back on its feet and it re-opened only 28 days after the flood.
   
   Expansion
   Beginning in 1984, Whole Foods Market began its expansion out of Austin, first to Houston and Dallas and then into New Orleans with the purchase of Whole Food Company in 1988. In 1989, we expanded to the West Coast with a store in Palo Alto, California. While continuing to open new stores from the ground up, we fueled rapid growth by acquiring other natural foods chains throughout the 90's: Wellspring Grocery of North Carolina, Bread & Circus of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Mrs. Gooch's Natural Foods Markets of Los Angeles, Bread of Life of Northern California, Fresh Fields Markets on the East Coast and in the Midwest, Florida Bread of Life stores, Detroit area Merchant of Vino stores, and Nature's Heartland of Boston.
   
   Whole Foods Market started our third decade with additional acquisitions of Food for Thought in Northern California and Harry's Farmers Market stores in Atlanta. In 2001, Whole Foods moved into Manhattan, generating a good deal of interest from the media and financial industries. 2002 saw an expansion into Canada and in 2004, Whole Foods Market entered the United Kingdom with the acquisition of seven Fresh & Wild stores.
   
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   The Companies of Whole Foods Market
   Whole Food Company
   Whole Food Company (WFC) opened its doors in New Orleans in October 1974. Its mission was to be a grocery store featuring good, wholesome food; not a "health food" store filled with pills and potions. Sales doubled each year for the first four years. By 1978, the store (only 1100 square feet) was doing more than $1 million per year. Success was fueled by a committed staff who were all stockholders in the company.
   
   In 1981, WFC opened a larger store on Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans. WFC became the largest outside customer of Texas Health Distributors, the wholesale division of Whole Foods Market. In May of 1988, the Esplanade store became the sixth Whole Foods Market.
   
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   Wellspring Grocery
   Wellspring Grocery opened its doors in 1981, after three years of planning and preparation. Owners Lex and Anne Alexander led a team of home-grown, energetic workers who set out to change the way the Triangle community of North Carolina (Durham, Raleigh and Chapel Hill) shopped for food. The idea was to offer high quality and great nutrition, and to encourage consumers to be more connected with the food they ate.
   
   The first store, located in Durham, was completely "vegetarian." In 1986, it moved to a larger space two blocks up the street, and in response to consumer demand, added fish, poultry and meat. In 1990, a second store opened in Chapel Hill, approximately 10 miles away. Wellspring Grocery joined Whole Foods Market in November of 1991.
   
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   Bread & Circus
   Anthony and Susan Harnett purchased the first Bread & Circus store in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1975. The first Bread & Circus sold natural foods and wooden toys, hence the unusual name.
   
   New stores opened in Cambridge (1979) and Wellesley (1980). In 1983, Bread & Circus challenged itself by expanding into Hadley, Massachusetts, located 100 miles from the Boston home base. In 1988, the company opened a store in Newton, MA. Later that year, it moved its central office to Newton, and established a central Commissary there. The Providence, Rhode Island store opened in 1990, and the original Brookline store moved to Brighton, Massachusetts in 1991.
   
   At the time of its acquisition by Whole Foods Market in 1992, Bread & Circus was the largest natural food retailer in the Northeast.
   
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   Mrs. Gooch's
   Sandy Gooch, a homemaker and former grade school teacher, became interested in natural foods after suffering severe allergic reactions to antibiotics and chemical additives in food. She joined forces with Dan Volland, who operated three health food stores, to open the first Mrs. Gooch's Natural Foods Market in West Los Angeles in January 1977.
   
   Within a year, the second market opened in Hermosa Beach. Over the next decade, new markets were launched in Northridge, Sherman Oaks, Glendale, Beverly Hills, and Thousand Oaks.
   
   Mrs. Gooch's held its suppliers to rigorous standards: no harmful chemicals or preservatives, no artificial colors or flavorings, and no white flour, refined sugar, alcohol, caffeine or chocolate. With its consumer education programs, the company helped fuel a growing demand for natural foods in southern California.
   
   Whole Foods Market acquired Mrs. Gooch's in 1993.
   
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   Fresh Fields
   Fresh Fields can be considered part of the "second generation" of natural food supermarket companies. Whereas all of the other companies that have become part of the Whole Foods Market family were started in the 1970's and early 1980's, Fresh Fields opened its first store in May of 1991 in Rockville, MD.
   
   The first store was very successful which led to the opening of four more stores in 1992. Eight additional stores were opened in 1993 including expansion into the Philadelphia and Chicago markets. By 1993, annual sales had reached $100 million and were over $200 million by 1995. At the time of the merger with Whole Foods Market, Fresh Fields had 22 stores open in four different market areas-Washington/ Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York/New Jersey/Connecticut and Chicago.

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