Whole Foods Cheaper Stores To Target 20 Somethings
“It will offer a convenient transparent and values-oriented experience geared toward millennial shoppers,” revealed co-CEO John Mackey.
As TIME reports, the company has already started building a team and seeking out locations for the new stores though they have not yet decided on a name.
“We want to underscore we see this as an ‘and’ to our Whole Foods Market brand not an ‘or,’ ” said Mackey.
The news comes a few months after Whole Foods announced they’d also be cutting prices across the country.
“We’re going to be relevant on price,” co-CEO Walter Robb said at the time. “We know where we stand relative to the others, and yes, of course on the items that are ubiquitous we’re going to be in and we’re going to have to price them right.”
With the new stores will come new exlcusive foods and beverages.
whole foods cheaper stores could be a new direction
Whole Foods recently raised eyebrows by announcing a major expansion of its flagship Whole Foods stores. The natural food giant, with a reputation for high prices, plans to open 1,200 stores throughout the U.S., up from 417 today.
investors worried the Whole Foods model would not work in markets in the Midwest and South with lower per-capita incomes than are found in current Whole Foods locations.
And according to TIME, those fears became a reality when WHole Foods revenue started to slip.
TIME adds:
On Wednesday, the company revealed that revenues at stores open for at least one year grew just 3.6% in the quarter ended April 12, not the 5.3% that was expected. Yet the company maintained that it continues to see sufficient demand for its original strategy.
But this new strategy could be a way for the company to hedge its bets.
“I wonder whether at some point, after starting to roll out these new cheaper stores in 2016, they come out and say, let’s cut back on that original goal of 1,200 Whole Foods stores and instead open 500 of these smaller cheaper stores,” Yarbrough says.
