Whole Foods has had quite the ride.
Over the course of 39 years, CEO and co-founder John Mackey has taken it from a small natural foods store in the hippie haven of Austin, Texas, to an international behemoth.
At the beginning, Whole Foods was only 10,500 square feet and had 19 employees. But the idea of natural food stores was only beginning, and as one of the first in the country, the seed that Mackey planted blossomed over time.
Through acquisitions of natural food stores around the country, the chain became larger and had ambitious growth plans. But it was also humbled a few times in its history — before being purchased by Amazon for $13.7 billion earlier this year, Whole Foods weathered a flood, financial downturns, and FTC probes.
Now that it's owned by Amazon, a new chapter is about to begin. Plenty has been said about what might change for the chain now, but it's also important to see what has changed for the chain in the past.
We've put together a timeline with some of the most important moments in Whole Foods' history.
In 1978, John Mackey opened Safer Way Natural Foods in Austin, Texas.
By 1980, it had merged with another local natural food store, Clarksville Natural Grocery, to open the first Whole Foods Market. This original store was destroyed in a flood in 1981, but the community rallied around it, and it ended up only being out of business for 28 days.
Much of Whole Foods' growth was through mergers and acquisitions. It frequently moved into new markets by buying a local chain and converting it into a Whole Foods. By 1984, Whole Foods had expanded to nearby Houston and had 600 employees. In 1988, the chain bought the Whole Food Company in New Orleans for its first expansion outside of Texas.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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