Wild Oats

[turil.livejournal.com]

Whole Foods just took over the Wild Oats chain of health food stores. They say they will be closing the stores that are underperforming or that are very close to other Whole Foods stores. I have no idea if the Wild Oats back on Rt 16 (just behind Tufts, and just over the border into Medford) is an underperfoming one or may be deemed too close to the Fresh Pond store, but if it does close, that may be an interesting location to put a Trader Joes or maybe a big food coop...

It's currently not that easy to get to from Davis, since there are no public buses that run from Davis to Tufts, but it's within walking distance of Teele Square (about a mile), and is far closer to Davis than any other decent sized whole foods grocery stores.

Anyway, I just thought I'd mention it, since it might effect some Davis folks.

Comments

[turil.livejournal.com]

I think they mostly wanted to compete with the coop, which is in a far better location than either of the two Whole Foods. Oh, and yes, they were Whole Foods by the time the River Street store showed up - I think they bought out B&C way back in 1994 or so.

[irinarasp.livejournal.com]

I moved to Boston in 99 and the store behind Symphony Hall was still a Bread and Circus then.

[ron_newman]

some number of years elapsed between Whole Foods buying B&C and them actually changing the store names.

[turil.livejournal.com]

The name might have not been changed yet, but the store changed well before then. The Symphony store was the one I went to when Whole Foods took them over. I'm guessing that they didn't bother to change the name because Bread & Circus was so popular, while Whole Foods didn't have any name recognition in the Boston area yet.

It's a lot like Star market here in Somerville. It took forever to change the name of the one in Porter to Shaws, and the one on Beacon Street is still Star, I think (or only recenty changed, if it's not still Star).