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Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Whole Foods Closing Heights Store
By Rivkela Brodsky
Journal Staff Writer
Whole Foods Market is closing its Wild Oats location at Juan Tabo and Menaul NE on Feb. 15, and most of the 47 employees there are expected to get jobs at other store locations.
The shelves were already emptying on Tuesday, and signs say everything is 33 percent off. One employee said she would cry if she started to talk about the closure.
Whole Foods took over the site in 2007 and was planning to make the store a Whole Foods, said Ben Friedland, marketing coordinator for the Whole Foods Rocky Mountain region.
“We were trying to work with the community and build interest in Whole Foods,” he said. “We were trying to entice people to come in and enjoy the experience.”
Apparently, there wasn't enough interest in that location.
The company looked at shopping patterns over the past year and a half, and found that customers were shopping at the other two Whole Foods locations more than the store on Juan Tabo, Friedland said.
“We had three stores in close proximity to each other,” he said.
With another Whole Foods in the NE heights, the company decided to close the Juan Tabo store.
The majority of the 47 employees that work at the Juan Tabo store will get positions at the other Whole Foods locations, one at Academy and Wyoming and another on Carlisle and Indian School, Friedland said. A 20,000 square-foot expansion is planned at the Academy and Wyoming location in the next six months. New jobs created by the expansion won't be available to Wild Oats workers for nine months to a year, Friedland said.
Scott Peck, who occasionally shopped at Wild Oats, left the store empty-handed on Tuesday. “It's almost empty in there,” he said. “There's not much left.” He said he would be inconvenienced but would probably do his natural foods shopping at the other NE Whole Foods location.
Whole Foods is still in litigation with the Federal Trade Commission over its takeover of Wild Oats Markets, said Kate Lowrey, a Whole Foods spokeswoman. A Sunflower Market will take over the former Wild Oats store at San Mateo and Academy in September.
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