Whole Foods to open in poor Chicago neighbourhood following Detroit success
According to the Washington Post, Whole Foods wants to triple in size, from 402 to 1,200 locations, and to do so it must look beyond saturated markets to places like Detroit and now a blighted section of Chicago.
Michael Bashaw, Whole Foods' regional president for the Midwest, told the Washington Post the company has been thinking about opening in "places like Detroit" for nearly five years, and the Detroit store "should never have been approved" based on the numbers, yet it reached its 10-year sales goals in the first 14 months.
The Detroit store, which received $4.2 million in tax incentives in the city, is a 21,000-square-foot location at Woodward and Mack avenues.
"A lot of things we hoped would work (in Detroit) are working, and I just couldn't be more pleased with that, particularly at a time when the narrative about the city is so negative," Whole Foods Market Co-CEO Walter Robb said after the opening in 2013. "I have to tell you, there is just a lot positive about that community."
"The common assumption is that Whole Foods is a store for rich, white people," he told the Washington Post. "I think the community had a feeling that what retailers brought to Detroit was not their A game, but their D game, that the stores were not as nice, not as clean, not as well staffed, that the customer service was poor -- that this was a disrespect to the community by giving them the leftovers."
Source: mlive.com
