Welcome to the Bellevue Whole Foods 365!

This store opened to great fanfare (and a huge advertising campaign) on September 12th, 2016, before closing just over a year later, on October 14th, 2017, the day I visited this store. It's hard to find any real information on why this store closed so soon, but it is notable that Whole Foods' buyout by Amazon came just a few months before the closure. 


I'm posting these pictures now because my 4-year "retail anniversary" is coming up soon (I'll have a real post about that on the day of), and I believe these are the last photos from 2017 that I'm likely to post! There are a few reasons why I haven't gotten around to posting these photos until now, including that this wasn't a particularly successful visit and that I haven't been particularly interested in posting about Amazon-owned stores (since Amazon isn't exactly well-loved in the retail community), but I'm thinking about making a habit of pulling a set or two from the far bottom of my (4000-photo) backlog around the time of my "retail anniversary" each year. I spend way too much time posting brand-new photos! 🙂

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 25, 2021 at 9:26 PM

    A good Amazon store is a closed one! Well, that's my opinion at least. I'm sure some will not agree, but oh well. Whole Foods is/was actually a Texas-based chain, but I wasn't a huge fan of theirs even before Amazon got a hold of them. Stores like Sprouts seem like a better mix of a normal supermarket and a natural foods supermarket.

    I suppose we'll have to wait for your anniversary post, but happy anniversary anyway!

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    1. AnonymousJuly 25, 2021 at 10:30 PM

      Oh, this is unrelated, but still kind of neat. I'm not sure how much you'll like this since it's from an era before when Kroger was in the NW, but maybe Retail Retell will like this if he sees it. Someone on Reddit posted a video from 1989 of the Kroger in NW Houston that they worked at. The Kroger at that time had a Superstore exterior and a Bauhaus interior. This is some nice Kroger nostalgia here! Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/houston/comments/orfhhy/in_which_i_do_a_brief_tour_of_the_kroger_at_the/

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    2. AnonymousJuly 25, 2021 at 10:39 PM

      Oh, sorry, I just saw this. Here's a longer clip from inside that 1989 Kroger. Probably Retail Retell will be the only one interested of 13 minutes of footage from inside a Bauhaus Superstore Kroger, but you never know! Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/houston/comments/orhpx1/a_longer_tour_of_the_kroger_at_pinemontantoine/

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    3. Northwest RetailJuly 25, 2021 at 11:02 PM

      Yeah, hard to disagree about Amazon stores... I'm certainly not a fan of Whole Foods either. But then again, natural foods stores in general (including Sprouts) aren't really my thing.

      Those videos are certainly cool to see! There certainly isn't that much out there from that era any more.

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  2. Albertsons Florida BlogJuly 26, 2021 at 4:07 AM

    While you're just about cleaned out of 2017 photos, I'm still sitting on a decent stockpile of photos from 2015 that I never posted! (Which would be my oldest left). I like the idea of breaking out some older content around the anniversary time - I might have to try that myself!

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    1. Northwest RetailJuly 26, 2021 at 7:14 PM

      Thanks! The only reason I'm almost done with 2017s is that I started partway through the year and have a lot fewer photos from that year in general. I doubt I'll be done with 2018s by this time next year!

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  3. Retail RetellJuly 26, 2021 at 11:05 AM

    Happy early retailversary! Yep, I've got plenty of fairly old photos in my archive, too. (I would say really old, but calling 2015 really old just doesn't seem right, even though it was six years ago already -- yikes!) And in reply to Anonymous -- great videos, thanks for the links! I only had time to look briefly through the first one right now, but I'll look at them both in closer detail later.

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    1. Northwest RetailJuly 26, 2021 at 7:25 PM

      Thanks! Retailversary -- I like that. (I've been trying to come up with a version of your "flickrversary"...) And 2015 sure feels like a long time ago to me, at least! 🙂

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    2. Retail RetellJuly 26, 2021 at 10:05 PM

      You're welcome! And ha, retailversary is definitely more usable than flickversary these days it seems, after their purge. I tend to just stick any word with "-versary" after it in these situations :P

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    3. Retail RetellJuly 27, 2021 at 8:56 PM

      Update: just finished the videos; lots of great stuff there! That's the first time I've ever seen Bauhaus beer and wine or pharmacy signage. Great views of the restaurant interior, GM counter, frozen aisles, and checklane lights/express signs as well.

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