After a seven-year hiatus, Whole Foods is back in Cap Hill.
The former Ideal Market store at 900 E. 11th Ave, another brand of the Amazon-owned grocer, has been quietly rebranded Whole Foods after customer feedback.
“They were looking for a more Whole Foods experience,” a manager at the store told BusinessDen on Wednesday.
The bulk of the work involved updating signage, and the product mix on shelves also changed somewhat, the manager said, adding the process wrapped up two weeks ago. A Whole Foods spokesman said the process started over six months ago.
The store was a Whole Foods for approximately a decade until November 2017, when the company closed it the same month it opened a location by downtown’s Union Station, despite being in the middle of a long-term lease. At the time, employees said they thought the location might reopen as a cheaper “Whole Foods 365” store, although the chain later abandoned that concept.
The store sat empty for three years. In October 2020, Whole Foods reopened the store as Ideal Market, using the name of a store that Whole Foods owned in Boulder.
Elsewhere in the Cap Hill grocery scene, the Natural Grocers store at 1433 Washington St. will close at the end of this month.
After a seven-year hiatus, Whole Foods is back in Cap Hill.
The former Ideal Market store at 900 E. 11th Ave, another brand of the Amazon-owned grocer, has been quietly rebranded Whole Foods after customer feedback.
“They were looking for a more Whole Foods experience,” a manager at the store told BusinessDen on Wednesday.
The bulk of the work involved updating signage, and the product mix on shelves also changed somewhat, the manager said, adding the process wrapped up two weeks ago. A Whole Foods spokesman said the process started over six months ago.
The store was a Whole Foods for approximately a decade until November 2017, when the company closed it the same month it opened a location by downtown’s Union Station, despite being in the middle of a long-term lease. At the time, employees said they thought the location might reopen as a cheaper “Whole Foods 365” store, although the chain later abandoned that concept.
The store sat empty for three years. In October 2020, Whole Foods reopened the store as Ideal Market, using the name of a store that Whole Foods owned in Boulder.
Elsewhere in the Cap Hill grocery scene, the Natural Grocers store at 1433 Washington St. will close at the end of this month.