Bellevue eagerly awaits opening of Whole Foods

By Kristina Shevory
Times Eastside business reporter

MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES Baker Laura Bemis removes orange poppy-seed buns from the oven as colleague Rob Baretich looks on as the final touches are being put on Bellevue's new Whole Foods store, due to open next Wednesday.

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Yesterday, 148 members of the Bellevue Downtown Association got a sneak peek around the store, dodging construction workers who were pounding fixtures into place, gluing tile on the walls and sawing counters for next week's opening.

Chapple Langemack, a self-described foodie who visits Whole Foods stores on all of her trips out of town, has been eagerly waiting for the store to open.

"My husband still talks about the rows and rows of sausages we saw at a Whole Foods in New York," said Langemack, managing librarian at Bellevue's regional library. "I haven't talked to anyone who's not excited about this store."

Whole Foods has turned the Bellevue store — its second in Washington — into a flagship, widening aisles, expanding departments and adding new features, including a gelato bar, crêpe counter, sections of international and prepared foods, a 4-foot-long chocolate case, 150 kinds of beer and 800 choices of wine.

	Jean Greenfield, regional grocery coordinator, sets up the bulk-foods bins at the Whole Foods store in Bellevue, scheduled to open next week. The store will have 26 cash registers.

The 56,000-square-foot store will be open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. It has 26 cash registers — more than any of its stores on the West Coast — to get customers through the line quickly.

"Day in and day out, one of the biggest things we got from customer comment cards in Seattle was that we needed an Eastside store," said Seth Stutzman, who managed the Seattle store for four years before he became Bellevue's team leader. "This is the next generation of what Whole Foods has to offer."

Whole Foods has been cashing in on the rising number of consumers switching to natural and organic foods. Overall natural- and organic-food sales increased between 2000 and 2003 from $11.9 billion to $15.6 billion, Nutrition Business Journal says.

Founded 14 years ago in Austin, Texas, with 19 employees, Whole Foods has grown into one of the largest natural and organic supermarket chains in the country with more than 26,000 employees. Last year, the grocer rang up $3.1 billion in sales at its 156 stores in the United States, Canada and United Kingdom and has seen sales grow by 23 percent this year to $2 billion.

The company plans to open four supermarkets in the region in the next two years and has 46 stores under development nationwide.

Competing grocery chains have been watching the progress of the Bellevue store, at Northeast Eighth Street and 116th Avenue Northeast, since construction began last year and are spending millions to remodel, expand produce selections and add private-label products. Larry's began remodeling its supermarket a block away in March, and QFC upgraded its 58,000-square-foot store in downtown Bellevue in February.

"This signals a maturing of the Bellevue market in retail and food choices," said Grant Ringel, chairman of the Bellevue Downtown Association, who attended the preview tour. "Like a lot of other places, we're paying more attention to the food we eat."

Eastside Business Notes appears every Wednesday in the Eastside edition of The Seattle Times. Kristina Shevory: 206-464-2039 or kshevory@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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