Defying the gloom and doom of this idea can't succeed in the U.K., the popular American health and whole foods market, Whole Foods Market, has in just a few years proliferating from its initial flagship emporium on Kensington High Street.

So Americans and others looking for say healthy picnic fixings now have six at last count WFMs to chose from, including one in Soho, a few blocks from the heart of tourist London.

So much for those Fodor Brit food experts who gave the initial operation nil chance of succeeding!

Bon appetit!


London
Whole Foods Market • Camden
49 Parkway,
London, UK NW1 7PN
8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Monday to Saturday
10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Sunday.

London
Whole Foods Market • Clapham Junction
305-311 Lavender Hill,
London, UK SW11 1LN
8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday to Friday
8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Saturday
10:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Sunday.

Whole Foods Market • Kensington
The Barkers Building, 63-97 Kensington High Street
Monday to Saturday 8am to 10pm.
Sunday: browsing- 11am. sales- 12 to 6pm.
Restaurant 8am to 9:45pm except Sunday 10am-5:45pm.

London
Whole Foods Market • Soho
69-75 Brewer Street,
London, UK W1F 9US
7:30am-9pm Monday to Friday
9am-9pm Saturday
11:30am- 6:30pm Sunday

London
Whole Foods Market • Stoke Newington
32-40 Stoke Newington Church St,
London, UK N16 0LU
8am-9pm Monday to Saturday
9am-9pm Sunday.

"Defying the gloom and doom of this idea can't succeed in the U.K."

London is not the UK, that sort of shop will do well in London...Until the novelty value wears off.
What succeeds in London is not a guaranteed indicator of what will succeed in the rest of the UK.

"!Defying the gloom and doom of this idea can't succeed in the U.K., "

Bollocks.

The exercise in corporate onanism on Kensington High St, currently impoverishing WFM shareholders by losing millions a year but helping the absurd John Mackey pretend he's not a third-rate fantasist, is nothing remotely like the commercially sane former Fresh & Wild stores PalQ is rabbiting on about. It might be like the forty WFM's Mackey's disciples claimed they'd open in Britain. But they haven't, so we'll never know. The ex-F&W stores Pal Q raves about, by contrast, are now just third-rate ripoffs of professionally run M&S's or Waitroses.

Mackey's made just one sane decision in Europe: buying Fresh & Wild from their British owners and inventors before coming close to destroying his company by buying Barkers: the world's biggest retail white elephant.

Only an American could be so hubristic with so little justification. And only an American couod be so ill-informed as to see the ex F&W stores as a success story.

ah yeh things do not always seem as they seem to be!

To be or not to be that is Q

Such ugly prejudices Flanneruk

"Only an American could be so hubristic with so little justification. And only an American couod be so ill-informed as to see the ex F&W stores as a success story."

I know this is an old post by Fodor's standards, but I came across it again searching for something else and this time I had to comment.

FLANNERUK - are you just looking for a reaction ( not unlike my teenage son) or do you really believe and are you really so worldly as to state with conviction "only an american?" 300 million of us and yet we are so easily clumped together. I don't actually recall having ever met you and yet you clearly have my number. Pretty hard to have an intelligent dialogue with someone who already has all the answers. Pity you waste your time here with us Americans. Funny thing - I think you might actually like most of us given the chance...

I think flanneruk is rude and "up his own arse" as the English like to say.

When I was a lad, there was a boy at school who initiated most devilment. When the culprits were caught and caned, he was never on the spot.
PalenQ has the habit of starting threads that look fairly innocuous but that are intending to annoy the Britons on the forum. Inevitably, some react, the dafter Americans join in and it all gets nasty.
His recent Coronation Street troll appears to have been pulled.
Flanner can be irascible, but you often get good useful advice from him.

Thanks for the input Josser. And while I am many things - daft is not one of them. Seems you got pulled in to. I won't waste anymore time here on this thread.

His recent Coronation Street troll appears to have been pulled>

Well much as you may have wished it had been pulled it has not and there is absolutely no reason it should have been - why not read it and see the rather interesting comments it sparked.

Fodor thought police like josser would like to silence anyone they just do not agree - and Josser before saying something about a thread being pulled why not just click on my screen name and see that it had not been? Or is your intention just to malign me - 'troll' that is a word that I think Fodor editors should ban - again go and read the thread and see what rather interesting and enlightening posts it has resulted in - and again do a simple check before posting something that is not true.

His recent Coronation Street troll appears to have been pulled>

Josser calls this thread, current now a 'troll':

"Have a Nice Day!" Raises British Ire? by PalenQ | 79 responses"

and how can anyone who reads that thread even consider it to be a troll? read the discussion and you get, as one poster put it
"And now I'll leave you to your discussion of the organic and evolving nature of language.>

yes the thread evolved into an intirguing even cerebral discussion of language in several countries and cultural attitudes, etc.

Yet josser calls this trolling. Me thinks he/she/it did not even read the thread and just had a knee jerk reaction to some darn Yank daring to say anything about Britain and British ways - but I have a keen interest in all things British and stand by that thread, that josser calls trolling, being anything but a troll.

This thread however was meant in a light-hearted vein and josser missed that too - taking yes everything posted by an American about Britain as an afront to Brits.

ttt

God Pal, look at the addresses, one glance should tell you hat they would be full of Boden wanker types.