London Q- Whole Foods Market?
 

just picked up a listing of stores at my local Whole Foods Market - an upscale health food, meat, veggie, cheese, wine vendor, etc. that is hugely popular in the U.S. and was shocked to see that they have six Whole Foods Market in the U.K.

Whole Foods stores are experiences in themselves and famously offer innumerable tastings of cheese, bread, deli items, etc. throughout the store - a veritable full-course meal as you nibble your way around the store. Quality is a trademark of Whole Foods and gourmet ready to go deli items, etc.

Q - any Londoners familiar with these new Whole Foods Markets in London. Locations are: Camden Town, Clapham Junction, Notting Hill, Soho and out of London: Stoke Newington and Clifton in Bristol.

How are they going over and most importantly do they have the liberal free sampling of gourmet foods throughout the store?

thanks

Fresh & Wild, the - to be honest, run of the mill - organic chain Whole Foods have bought here haven't rebranded.

Whole Foods have acquired the old Barker's department store building in Ken High St, and say they'll open in June as a Whole Foods Market. What they'll do then with the chain of small shops remains to be seen. Friends in the area - spotting how empty Abercrombie and Fitch now is after the initial hype - are sceptical, but who knows?

Borders seems to be the exception when U.S. chains buy into the U.K. market - i assume they are thriving - think bought Waterstone's chain. Flanner - any dope about Border's UK operations?

Starbucks (who i believe bought Seattle Coffee chain to enter UK market) is of course hugely successful with i read over 200 outlets in greater London and plans for dozens more... and of course McDonalds.

But few American companies seem to be able to make transition. WalMart still struggling with ASDA. Safeway long ago i think tried and of course failed but not sure Safeway UK was ever American-run?

thanks for your takes on Whole Foods!

Pal: ever wondered why WholeFoods/Fresh Fields has done so well <b>in the US</b>?

I'd be curious about your take on that.

There are several here in the Washington, DC, area and I have long felt their success has to do as much with ambience as anything although they do offer high quality stuff.

I think some of their produce is overpriced considering that in some cases you can the same thing cheaper at Safeway.

I wish Fornum and Mason would <b>come here</b>...in this area it would be a sure winner!

dukey - i think you hit it on the head - the ambience - the bright decor, food so attractively displayed and ballyhooed attention to quality and healthy food, appealing to a well-heeled clientele and squeaky clean stores.

folks whose incomes let them put quality above value - Trader Joe's is going for the lower end of this market but still same principles.

Not sure exactly but in my town is perpetually crowded. And there are some good values amongst the high priced goods that i go there for.

I agree totally with your assessment of both WF and Trader Joe's; there are several of the latter around here also and I think between the two of them they offer some wonderful stuff.

I have often wondered if both of these places are somehow more like some of the stores we have shopped in in Europe.

yeh - i think you're right - more like a European market atmosphere. More so Whole Foods than TJ

Funny about Trader Joe's - i was in Germany in January and went into an Aldi - super discount food store with limited selection - some in U.S. as well - and bought a can of peanuts for about a buck - turns out it has the Trader Joe's logo on it and was made by Trader Joe's - same nuts they sell for twice as much in U.S. Tickled me - the usual gourmet type Trader Joe's stuff in Aldi! I'm still wondering how that happens. trader joe's has a lot of German chocolates so maybe there's some trading going on. Aldi's i believe made their name originally on their cheap and good chocolate.

US retailers face two - well, three really - problems here.

Sometimes they're in a mature market and just too arrogant to understand that UK consumers don't think they're distinctive. That's long been Gap's problem (unlike other foreign clothes retailers, like Zara, H+M or Primark, who take the trouble to sell clothes Britons want to wear)- and it's really Wal-Mart's. It hits Americans most because Britain's big enough for a German or Spanish retailer to take seriously: since the UK chain's never going to be bigger than the West of the Rockies domestic operation, Americans often can't see ther point in all that overhead.

Sometimes they've got a distinctive product, but it requires unusual amounts of space. Even if consumers like the offer, the retailer has to support the costs of a large UK office for the years it takes to build up a network of suitable sites. That, more or less, was LensCrafters problem.

Third, the problem might really be at home. Domestic business struggles, money needs to be found and the UK network - for its real estate alone, which has inflated in the past decade - is worth a great deal more than is on the books. Sell the (usually still indifferently performing) UK chain and Wall Street's happy. That's what happened with Safeway, in Britain roughly simultaneously with similar selloffs in Australia and Germany.

Border's probably sort of avoided the problem (I'm too mean to pay for access to its accounts at Companies House) by buying a smallish chain (Books Etc) which can be extended quickly, to provide a sales volume to defray the UK overhead of the few superstores it's managed to open.

It's also surprisingly distinctive (I think it's hopeless as a bookstore, but what do I know?): in Oxford it's always more crowded than the two locally-owned book superstores, Waterstone's and Blackwell's. Its book sections there are pretty short of customers, but its (outstanding and unique) magazine section is always heaving.

thanks flanner - guess i was wrong about waterstone's being owned by Borders, whose only growth in the past few years has been in the UK market whilst struggling at home, in part due to its Borders Rewards program.

There is talk about Borders pulling out of the UK. See http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/s...066931,00.html

Personally, I could never see how they could make much money with all that stock, and encouraging people to sit around reading the books and magazines. The shops may be busy, but it is sales that matter.

cappuccinos and lattes?

Are you saying that the Borders stores have more &quot;stock&quot; than Waterstone's?

The &quot;sitting around&quot; concept has become very popular here in the US. I assume someone, somewhere figured it might increase revenue; the prices they charge for the food and coffee/beverages while people are sitting around couldn't possibly be
loss leaders!

contrast Borders to FNAC in France and Belgium - no idle idling encouraged there unless changed in recent times - i was even told once to buy or fly.

not sure which business model Europeans like more - business like or consumer friendly.

I feel so old. I remember knocking around the original Whole Foods in Austin with my hippie sister and brother in law.

missypie - how about Oat Willie's Dept Store in Austin?

Why am I suddenly thinking of Honest Ed Mirvish's place in Toronto..talk about no standing or sitting around...

&quot;not sure which business model Europeans like more - business like or consumer friendly.&quot;

In practically any chain operation you can think of, the UK/French/German version will be a great deal more concerned with short-term profit maximisation than the US alternative.

Space costs more, and so do minimum-wage staff, once you've added social costs. What customers prefer is irrelevant: it's what the owner can afford to offer that matters.

FWIW, I've yet to see a Borders where the books - and that's where the real, cash, margins are - are moving off the shelves as quickly as at the closest Waterstone's - which is why I think it's a hopeless bookstore. They also seem to me to have been dragged into unwinnable price wars with bigger (Waterstone's) and nastier (Tesco) competitors.

Long ago when i had a company that led bike tours through Belgium (and other countries) bike stores there were notorious for no-nonsense and would tell our Yank cyclists - just looking - there's the door. this happened many times in some such nuance.

I think if a place in the US adopted that &quot;just looking...there's the door&quot; attitude it would have a hard time surviving in many regions.

Yeah, our firm took a locally owned bookstore chain through liquidation after Borders came in. Our client (which was very successful for two generations) hated to have people lounging around, reading their books for free. They finally realized they had to change, but by then it was too late.