Whole Foods has been one of the most successful supermarket stories in decades. Billing itself as America’s Healthiest Grocery Store, the chain has expanded—through acquisitions and new store openings—from a mere six stores in 1988 to around 350 locations today. While food sellers such as Walmart, Aldi, and WinCo compete first and foremost by offering low prices, the Whole Foods model was built with a particular focus on organic, all-natural, high-quality foods. Whole Foods is often credited with reinventing the supermarket, and today it is undeniably the king of the healthier grocery store category. But there are plenty of competitors that would like to challenge for the crown. Here are three:
Wild Oats Market
This week, the Yucaipa Companies announced it was purchasing most of the 200 Fresh & Easy brand grocery stores that have been on the market since European supermarket giant Tesco put the struggling brand up for sale last spring. Since anonymous reports surfaced in June, it’s been openly discussed that Yucaipa and its managing partner, billionaire Ron Burkle, had been planning on purchasing the Fresh & Easy stores—all located in Arizona, California, and Nevada—and converting each into a Wild Oats Market, an organic food pioneer that born in Boulder, Colo., in 1987 whose 110 stores were sold in 2007 to (yep) Whole Foods. (Whole Foods was forced to sell the Wild Oats brand a few years later.)
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