Christos Andrews

Whole Foods Market: Like Starbucks, Hit by Slowing Economy, Increased Competition

I work for that WFM mentioned above in Reno. Our opening day is Wednesday (3 days away), and we actually closed the old Wild Oats building just today. I can tell you that the pricing situation has just recently gotten much better. We did a thorough price match with Trader Joe's, so literally, you CAN'T buy anything cheaper at TJ's than you can at WFM, even private label comparisons.
We had a pre-opening farmer's market in the parking lot today, and it had a massive turn-out, almost 3x what I expected. Because of that excitement of everyone there just for the pre-opening, I can't imagine how great business will be for us. When it was originally built, one of the intentions of building a large intricate WFM in Reno is to get people to travel to come see it, but with gas approaching $5 a gallon, who knows if that will be a good demographic for us. I was very weary opening up a store that size with that many employees in such an isolated, relatively-small city, but I think it will turn out better than I originally thought. Same goes for the Hawaii location...it's a small test market, not a full-blown luxury store, and I imagine they keep the tourism as a strong factor in this.

And as for the stock (one reason I was worried), I think a lot of it has to do with Wild Oats. I can personally say that our consumer base is continuing to grow, but rebranding and relocating so much in one year can cost a lot of money, especially since so much of WFMI's income is recirculated into the company for such things, so they aren't afraid to binge on it. WFMI continues to grow, and I firmly believe that given a year or two, the profits will be more than made up for.