Whole Foods Debuts London Flagship

GLYNN DAVIS

LONDON — Whole Foods' flagship United Kingdom store, which opened here last week, offers a large assortment of Fresh & Wild Everyday Value products that are the equivalent of the “365 Everyday Value” brand in the U.S.

The company is unable to use the “365” brand because it is already registered by a competitor in the U.K., a Whole Foods official told SN. Fresh & Wild is the name of the U.K. chain of small natural food stores that Whole Foods acquired in 2004.

Other private-label brands include Whole Pantry and Whole Body, according to a report by Planet Retail.

The three-story, 80,000-square-foot Whole Foods flagship store seeks to loosely imitate the popular “Borough Market” in South East London that was featured in the film “Bridget Jones's Diary” and is a mecca for foodies, according to one of the chain's suppliers here. For example, the Whole Foods store uses Utobeer as its supplier of beer and Neal's Yard Dairy as its cheese provider (featured in a temperature-controlled cheese room), which both have outlets at Borough Market. The store is understood to be benchmarking its prices with the market rather than against other supermarkets in the U.K.

Another supplier revealed that the store was looking to attract as many as 70,000 people each week.

Included in the store are 13 different eat-in food options — including a Champagne & Oyster bar, an Italian food counter and a Mezze bar — with seating for 350 diners.