Whole Foods Wild Oats Merger

Whole Foods Market has received recognition as recent as January 27th 2011 when CNBC aired Supermarkets Inc: Inside a 500 Billion Money Machine. “Whole Foods is arguably the most influential, and by some measures, the most successful supermarket chain in the world. The specialty gourmet store has grown into a Fortune-300 company offering specialty foods and locally grown organic produce.1” CNBC goes on to state that even “Established brands like Safeway, Giant Eagle and Kroger are cultural icons as familiar as our own street names, but they are under constant attack from brilliant upstarts like Whole Foods…1” From the general supermarket industry Whole Foods Market breaks down into even a smaller specific

The mergers with great reputation brands not only elevated Whole Foods Market’s character, but also stabled its market position. In 1991, Wellspring Grocery joined Whole Foods Market. Similar to Whole Food, Wellspring Grocery started with a positive attitude toward changing the market. Unlike other grocery stores, it wanted to bring healthy diet on shelves, rather than pills and canned food. This idea brought attention to what people are consuming daily. Second merger happened one year after Wellspring Grocery’s success. Bread and Circus, a company that used to sell natural food and wooden toys, valued costumer’s opinion. Costumers were happy to shop in Bread and Circus. Its expeditiously expansion caught Whole Foods Market’s attention. In order to stable its market not only in Taxes, it decided to purchase Bread and Circus. Last, Mrs. Gooch’s, a grocery store that targeted on allergic

In 1978, John Mackey and Renee Lawson borrowed $45,000 from family and friends to open a small natural foods store called SaferWay in Austin. Two years later, Mackey partnered with Craig Weller and Mark Skiles to merge SaferWay with the latter’s Clarksville Natural Grocery, resulting in the opening of the original Whole Foods Market (WFM). Since then, WFM has expanded to 466 stores in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom, averaging over nine million customer visits each week. “The company has always represented the highest quality, selection and service while still offering prices customers are willing to pay on premium products”. (Whole Foods Market,

In 2004, Whole Foods expanded globally when they acquired the Fresh & Wild chain of seven natural food stores in the United Kingdom. In 2007, they opened a three level store in West London. (Whole Foods Market History)

Whole Foods Market, INC (ticker: WFM) one of the main leaders in supermarket/grocery industry. The company opened its first store in 1980 in Austin, Texas and it was among few supermarkets that were providing natural products. (1) Whole Foods Market was the first store to emphasis on organic food with a clear mission to be a provider of products with the highest quality. Whole Foods started expanding into different states across United States by mergers and acquisitions. Their first international expansion was into Canada in 2002, followed by and acquisition of seven Fresh & Wild stores in United Kingdom in 2004 which was the largest chain of organic grocery stores. (2) In order to lock their strong presence Whole Foods needed to make sure that their mission is heard and that they are faithful to their values. They are known for the highest quality products, before a product is available for purchase in stores it first goes through multiple steps of quality control and only when the requirements are met, the product makes it way to shelves. In order to satisfy organic standard, products need USDA approval, which prohibits the use of genetically modified organisms, pesticides, use of antibiotics or growth hormones in livestock. (3) Whole Foods is an environmentally sustainable, an example would be that they encourage their shoppers to either reuse shopping bags or they provide paper bags that are recyclable, they also donate good amount of money for environmental

Whole Foods rivals included, local, regional, and national supermarkets, along with specialty grocery stores and health and natural food stores. The company 's two biggest competitors in the organic food segment were Wild Oats Markets and Fresh Market. Wild Oats was probably the biggest competition, because they lowered their prices to increase their store traffic and raise the average purchase.

WFM Industry: Grocery Stores | Whole Foods Market, Inc. Stock - Yahoo! Finance. (n.d.). Retrieved February 04, 2016, from https://finance.yahoo.com/q/in?s=WFM

Whole Foods Market Inc. is a supermarket selling highest quality natural and organic food, was founded by John Mackey in Austin, Texas in 1980. Whole Foods Market is leading the supermarket industry worldwide, its recorded sales had reached $10,107.79 million in 2011 and it has expanded more than 430 stores in the United states in 2015 (Whole Foods Market, 2015).

Whole Foods Market, incorporated on August 15, 1980, is the world’s leading retailer of natural and organic foods and America’s first national “Certified Organic” grocer. Since 2012, Whole Foods Market operated 335 stores in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Depend on 2011 sales rankings from Progressive Grocer, Whole Foods Market became the largest retailer of natural and organic foods in the U.S. and the 11th largest food retailer overall. Today Whole Foods Market consists of 32000 employees and owns stores average 38,000 square feet in size and 10 years in age, and the scale of Whole Foods Market is continue growing through mergers, acquisitions and new store opening

Whole Foods Market (WFM) is a leading natural and organic food supermarket founded in Austin, Texas by four local business people: John Mackey and Renee Lawson Hardy, owners of Safer Way Natural Foods, and Craig Weller and Mark Skiles, owners of Clarksville Natural Grocery. WFM opened its first store in 1980, they staffed their first store with only 19 workers, the store was an immediate success partly because at the time there were less than half a dozen organic stores in the entire country.

The grocery industry is highly fragmented, with a multitude of strong regional players (Safeway, Publix, Kroeger, Wegmans, etc.). The largest grocery retailer in the United States is Wal-Mart, with an estimated 33% share. Other major retailers are targeting this segment of the industry, focused on a relatively narrow selection of key commodity foods at relatively low prices (Forbes, 2011). Whole Foods competes in a segment occupied by differentiated grocery players including Trader Joe's, Fresh Market and a highly fragmented selection of local and regional upscale and health-conscious grocery stores. The big players in the industry usually carry ranges of organic and natural products as well, siphoning off some business from Whole Foods. As Whole Foods grows, it comes into competition with mainstream grocery retailers more frequently (McLaughlin & Martin, 2009).

Some of the disadvantages that the merge of Amazon with Wholefoods brings are the fact that in order for the customer to get the Amazon Prime deal, the customer must buy the groceries online and can do a store pick up option, but doing this eliminates the need for a cashier. The cashier is now being replaced with the technology changes that Amazon is embracing. This can be a disadvantage to many cashiers in the future. Still with the Amazon Prime deal, Wholefoods is expensive compared to other grocery stores. Wholefoods has penetrated only in certain locations and if the prices stay expensive the grocery store won’t be able to penetrate in low or middle income neighborhoods.

Two years after opening his SaferWay store, John Mackey merged with Clarksville Natural Grocery in Austin, Texas. This resulted in the opening of the original Whole foods Market in 1980. In 1984, Whole Foods expanded out of Austin into Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, and one store in California (Whole Foods Market, 2008b). This expansion was accomplished in significant part through many acquisitions of other natural food chains throughout its three decade history.

Whole Foods Market (WFM) is struggling to stabilize the natural and organic market share among competitors. One of the major problems is their organic product prices are very high for average consumers and they are using the same food distributor in the U.S. According to the Business Insider report, the WFM brand image is no longer attracted to new customers because they can find alternative organic products with cheaper prices in the competitor stores. And also WFM competitors such as Trader Joe’s and Kroger are maintaining their private-label products to make unique organic products and promote their band image.

WFM has been named America’s Healthiest Grocery store selling a variety of natural and organic food products. The rivalry amongst competitors is extremely