Whole Foods Market celebrates 30 years anniversary

Whole Foods Market will turn 30 this September, PR Newswire reports. Festivities will take place at all of its stores as well as in the headquarters. To ceelebrate its 30th birthday, 30 shoppers and their guests were selected from more than 5,600 entries from the Company's "A Heart as Big as Texas" short essay contest to win a trip to Whole Foods Market's world headquarters in Austin for an expense-paid VIP culinary weekend. 

Nineteen Team Members helped open Whole Foods Market in Austin on September 20, 1980, with the goal of providing a more natural alternative to conventional grocery offerings. The chain today employs more than 55,000 team members in its 298 stores in the United States, Canada and in the United Kingdom and reached sales of 8 billion US$ in 2009.
 

Whole Foods Market is increasing the number of new-store openings as it re-accelerates an aggressive growth program, Supermarket News reports. After a period during which it slowed new-store growth to invest in price, the company said it expected to open 17 new stores in 2011 and 19 in 2012, compared with 15 stores opened last year and 15 more expected this year.