Whole Foods Makes Big Splash With San Francisco Opening

They lined up outside in the early morning hours, gave a rousing cheer when the doors finally opened and rushed inside to find staff people embracing and taking photographs.

Rock concert? Campaign rally? Awards ceremony?

No. It was the opening last month of the first Whole Foods natural foods supermarket in San Francisco. The acquisitive Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods chain, which operates six other area stores, unveiled its new, 60,000-square-foot facility in an atmosphere that was downright celebratory.

Salt-free brown rice cakes, microbrewery ales, 4-pound tubs of Nancy’s nonfat yogurt, 3-foot-high stacks of produce that looked like an organic Maginot Line and free-range poultry vied with an espresso bar and bakery for the attention of shoppers--outnumbered as the doors opened by the commodious store’s large staff.

Over by the butcher shop, shopper Barth Marshall trolled the aisles. Speaking in a crisp British accent, Marshall said she came “because I was curious, and I live nearby. I like natural foods, but there was nothing like this nearby. That’s why I’m glad it’s here in San Francisco.”

Said store manager David Lannon: “Northern California is generally thought of as the best market for natural foods. People here are much more accepting, and natural foods are more in the mainstream than in any other part of the country.”

Lannon, a Boston resident who came West three years ago, bustled about as new customers nibbled free samples of peaches and other items and looked around. Bathed in sunshine from skylights, its floors immaculately scrubbed, the store--formerly a BMW dealership--fairly glowed.

Shopper Randy Schick, a resident of the store’s Baja Pacific Heights neighborhood, said of Whole Foods, “It’s very nice,” but added that “there are no bargains here. I tasted the produce, and I’m sorry to say it, but the Farmers’ Market is better. The peaches were hard, sour and tart.”

Nevertheless, Schick described the store’s appearance and ambience as uplifting and said he would likely be back.

The busy yet soothing ambience is well thought out.

On the walls above the produce counter hang photographs of farmers who grow the store’s lettuce, tomatoes and corn. Above the butcher counter hangs a photo of the fish buyer, accompanied by a sign saying, “If you don’t see your favorite fish, it’s because it just wasn’t good enough to meet our quality standards.”

Whole Foods is an expanding business that paid $134.5 million this year to acquire the Maryland chain of Fresh Fields markets and is traded on the Nasdaq exchange.

Considered one of the most powerful food retailers in the $6-billion natural food business, Whole Foods has combined the spaciousness and cleanliness of standard supermarkets with the specialty items and organic foods of traditionally tiny mom-and-pop health food stores.

In San Francisco, Whole Foods enters a newly crowded field that includes the new, cavernous, warehouse-like Rainbow store and the smaller stores of the locally based Real Foods chain. Another recent entry is Wild Oats, a natural foods supermarket somewhat smaller than Whole Foods and Rainbow and, unlike them, without on-site parking.

Mid-morning shopping was beginning to pick up. For those for whom opening day was just too exciting, Whole Foods worker Matt Green waited near the snack bar for his first massage client. The price: $1 a minute, in a specially built chair with headrest.