Whole Foods had been expanding breath-takingly fast over the past several years, with new locations - many of which are huge or feature unusual amenities - popping up all over the place. Being everywhere is one way to beat out the competition (think Starbucks), but another way is to buy them up. Whole Foods has just announced that they will be buying Wild Oats Markets, one of their top competitors, for $565 million, with the deal expected to to close over the next few weeks.
Colorado-based Wild Oats has 110 stores in 24 states and British Columbia and has not been doing as well as its rival. Whole Foods has twice the sales per square foot of retail space, though Wild Oats has smaller stores, and recently lost both their chief executive and chief financial officers.
Some stores will be closed and others will be relocated to fit in with existing Whole Foods stores, but Whole Foods feels that they can improve the Wild Oats stores on the whole and "put jet propulsion under [them]" to bring their sales up to Whole Foods levels. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey estimates that it could take two ears to fully integrate the Wild Oats stores
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