In a story posted Friday afternoon, a Portland, Ore., media outlet said the Austin-based organic foods giant would launch a new chain of value brands next year in the Northwest based on comments made by a worker at a conference.
Not so fast, said Whole Foods spokeswoman Kate Lowery.
“There’s no market for certain at this time,” Lowery said Monday.
In a second-quarter earnings call earlier this month, Whole Foods executives revealed plans to launch a new, but as yet unnamed, chain of smaller, value focused stores next year to draw more millennials as shoppers.
It said it would reveal little about the plans until this summer. So far, the news has set off a firestorm of speculation, from what the stores could be called to where the brand could launch next year.
In Friday’s story, the Portland Business Journal, which began as “Let the speculation begin,” said a Whole Foods forager for Whole Foods’ Northwest region, Denise Breyley, told a Portland audience a day earlier that they would “be some of the first to pilot this new concept.”
The comments were part of a food forum series. Breyley was also reported as saying the store size would be about 25,000 square feet and carry many of the same Whole Foods products seen at the retailer’s larger stores.
Whole Foods’ average store size is 38,000 square feet. In recent years, it has launched plans for smaller stores, including a 14,000-square foot store in Prescott, Ariz., and an 18,000-square foot store slated for a Chicago area neighborhood.
Analysts and industry experts have said it’s too early to say whether the new store brand aimed younger shoppers help kick-start Whole Foods Market’s slowing sales growth. The retailer has faced growing competition as larger and smaller grocers jump into the fray with organic offerings.
Whole Foods is one of Austin’s highest-profile companies with more than 2,500 employees in Central Texas who are part of an overall 88,000 workforce at 417 stores worldwide.
The retailer saw a challenging earnings report more than a year ago, bouncing back after launching a five-part strategy to win back customers, including its first national ad campaign and a grocery delivery and pickup service.
This month, it faced another round of challenging earnings, when it met Wall Street expectations on earnings per share but missed on revenue and same-store sales.
For example, in a key industry metric, Whole Foods reported same-store sales growth of 3.6 percent, below analyst projections of 5.3 percent and well below the 10 percent or higher sales growth Whole Foods enjoyed in previous years.
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