It’s widely viewed as Britain’s most upmarket supermarket, known by regulars for its organic produce, premium experience and speciality items.
Now, Whole Foods Market has unveiled plans to open six new stores in London over the next three months – doubling the number of shops it has in the UK.
The American chain, which was bought by Amazon in 2017 and already has six stores all in the capital, expects to open the new outlets on dates between April and June.
Three new Central London stores will be in the Liverpool Street, Monument and Westminster areas, with the others in Notting Hill Gate, Angel and Canary Wharf.
Its existing stores are located in Camden, Chelsea, Clapham Junction, Piccadilly, Stoke Newington and Kensington – the latter being its first European shop in 2007.
The store near Kensington Palace is popular with royals and Meghan Markle was famously spotted there in November 2016 before her engagement to Prince Harry.
Whole Foods Market chief executive Jason Buechel said today: ‘We’re happy to be expanding Whole Foods Market’s physical store presence in the UK.
‘[This will allow] us to reach more customers with our uncompromising quality standards and carefully curated selection of natural and organic products.
The Whole Foods Market store in Stoke Newington is one of six existing shops in London
Meghan Markle was seen shopping at the Whole Foods store in Kensington in November 2016
Diego Hvozda, team leader at the Whole Foods Market store in Piccadilly in Central London
‘Each new store represents an opportunity to bring responsibly sourced, high-quality food to more communities who share our values of nourishing people and the planet.’
Bosses said the new outlets will offer shoppers organic and fresh produce, as well as prepared foods such as salads, sandwiches and hot meals.
Meat and seafood, fresh bakery items, flowers, plants, speciality cheeses and charcuterie will also be available, as well as beers, wines and spirits.
Wellness and beauty products will be on sale too. The company said it will make a food donation to the Felix Project charity at the openings of three of the stores.
Amazon said last September it was closing all of its Amazon Fresh shops, shutting the 19 remaining sites as it shifted operations back towards its online business.
Europe’s first Whole Foods Market was in Kensington – pictured on its opening day in 2007
Whole Foods Market on Kensington High Street in West London which opened on June 6, 2007
Amazon said at the time it planned to convert five of these into Whole Foods stores.
Tesco then revealed this February that it was also converting five of the former Amazon Fresh sites into Express stores as part of a major expansion programme.
The sector is pushing ahead with further convenience store rollouts amid a trend for shoppers to make fewer big store trips and more regular purchases from local stores.
Globally, Amazon said in January that since its purchase of Whole Foods in 2017, it has seen sales grow by more than 40 per cent and an expansion to 550 locations.
The US tech giant based in Silicon Valley also said at the time that it planned to open more than 100 new Whole Foods Market stores over the next few years.
