Whole Foods Market has announced today that it will open a new 27,000 square-foot store in Cheltenham in Autumn 2012.
It will be the grocer’s fourth new store to be announced in recent months following Giffnock (Glasgow, opening November 2011), Fulham Broadway and Richmond upon Thames (opening 2013).
The new store will create 150 new full and part-time jobs and offers further confirmation that Whole Foods, the world’s largest natural and organic food retailer, is very serious about building a nationwide presence in the UK.
The Cheltenham store, a former Homebase, is situated on the Gallagher Retail Park on the Tewkesbury Road, just outside of Cheltenham town centre. The store will include an outdoor seating area, a ‘scratch’ bakery and a full service butchery counter. Whole Foods Market’s natural remedies department, Whole Body will also feature.
Jeff Turnas, Whole Foods Market’s UK regional president, said: “We are very pleased to be able to announce another store outside of London in Cheltenham. It’s our intention to bring the best quality foods to shoppers throughout the UK and this store, our seventh to open in the UK and our first English store outside of London will help us achieve that. It will help us increase awareness of what we can offer shoppers in the arena of natural foods and it will also enable us to show off the best in British foods, our unique animal welfare rated meats and sustainably ranked seafood, while focusing on reviving traditional skills such as butchery and fishmongery in store.
As with our existing London stores, our goal is to be the finest food shop in every community we serve. For example,we will be baking and cooking on site each day and we will be offering an amazing array of fresh, healthy and organic food, highlighting local products from our UK producers.We want our customers to celebrate the joys of eating and living well and we hope to help prompt conscious food choices.”
