Whole Foods Market is scheduled to open its first store in South Carolina on Wednesday, in Mount Pleasant.
The store is at 923 Houston Northcutt Blvd., in the Patriot’s Plaza shopping center, according to the company’s website, which listed May 19 as the opening date. Whole Foods calls it its Charleston store.
“It is a privilege for Whole Foods Market to open its first South Carolina store at Patriot’s Plaza in historic Mount Pleasant,” the store’s web page says.
The page describes the store as a combination of a corner grocery, organic farmers market, butcher, gourmet specialty shop, European bakery and cafe, with natural and organic foods from around the world, including produce and seafood from the local area. Paul Harty is the store team leader, and Shanti Walls is the associate store team leader, according to the site.
Whole Foods, founded in 1980 in Austin, Texas, calls itself the largest natural and organic foods retailer. It had 156 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom and sales of $3.1 billion in fiscal 2003, the company said in its May 4 earnings release.
The company has been adding stores quickly. It said in the same release that it had 46 stores in development, averaging 46,400 square feet, and expected to open nine or 10 new stores in the second half of its fiscal year, which ends in September. Whole Foods opened three stores in its second quarter, in New York, Louisville, Kentucky, and Colorado Springs, Colorado.
As of September 2003, Whole Foods had five stores in North Carolina and six in Georgia, and none in South Carolina, according to its most recent annual report.
