Whole Foods London

Whole Foods Market Britain has reported a loss of close to 36 million £ for last year. A loss of almost 10 million £ had been reported for the previous 12 months. The US food retailer opened its UK flagship store in Kensington in June 2007, and further stores have been announced. So far, this hasn’t happened. The Kensington store on 80,000 square feet has been struggling to compete against established UK grocers and, at times, has suffered from very low customer traffic. Whole Foods Kensington, which is sometimes called Britain's first green supermarket, has been criticised for a lack of customer parking and operating a costly fish counter, which is said to be out-sized and not used enough, The Guardian reports. Fresh & Wild, the UK subsidiary of Whole Foods, was hit by an impairment charge on several stores. In a statement, Whole Foods said that the 27 million £ impairment charge was simply an accounting measure that did not accurately reflect the progress the company has started to see in the UK.
 

Whole Foods UK has brought in senior executives from the US - Jeff Turnas, a company veteran of 15 years, as regional president - and David Doctorow, it’s newly appointed vice president in the UK, with 27 years of experience. In addition to its flagship High Street Kensington store, the last four remaining Fresh & Wild stores (from eight shops originally), which were acquired in 2004, were re-branded to the Whole Foods Market brand. According to some sources, Whole Foods was "very close" to opening another store in the UK, although it stays unclear where. Whole Foods said it had taken steps over the past year to "ensure its long-term future" in the UK, including closing its Bristol store in September, according to the company.
 

Mr Turnas said, according to the Independent, that Whole Foods Market had been making changes and improvements to the Kensington store, and they have been pleased with the positive reactions from their customers. The company planned to continue to make these types of changes at their UK stores as well as continue to aggressively look for additional store sites in London, according to Mr Turnas. In his opinion, it was well documented what had happened to the economy in recent times, but they had a good core of customers who shopped with them regularly. They did understand the difficulties of starting out in a new country, since they had a similar experience in Canada where they struggled initially, and they did not see it as any different in the UK.
 

A further measurement for improving business were plans to give Whole Foods stores a stronger emphasis on healthy eating, as was revealed in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey said that his company sold “a bunch of junk”.  Mr. Mackey stated that they used to think it was enough just to sell healthy food, but they knew that it was not enough.  The Whole Foods founder announced that the store would be introducing in-store education points - there would be someone in a kiosk to answer questions, and cookbooks and health books would be available, as well as some cooking classes. In his opinion it was important to show consumers how to select food, because they didn’t  know.

The Independent, The Guardian