![]() At the same time, we also like to procure a lot of local products. ![]() Are some of these getting their first shot at the mass channel? You have about 60 vendors who are based in the D/FW area. The gas provides the heat, but you put wood in, and the wood smokes the product. And in some of the future stores that we’ve designed, we’re going to try and find a way to expose that smoker so it’s more visible. You can’t really see it, but in the back of the house, we have a pretty substantial-sized room with a very heavy duty commercial smoker that’s running 24 hours a day. This store has three, which includes a dedicated barbecue bar. If you went back five years ago, you might find one bar in a store. We just opened a store in Houston two weeks ago where we did wood-fired. It’s a really hot oven, it really becomes a craft. There’s a whole flavor profile that you wouldn’t get with a gas oven. We just really felt can we take pizza to another level. We’d bring in a gas oven and put out traditional recipes. We’ve had pizza ovens in our stores since the early 1990s, but for years it’s become standard. For this store, we wanted to make it a little larger, connect it to pizza. They can just come in, they do their shopping, they enjoy a glass of chardonnay. I see a lot of moms like to enjoy the bars, because they don’t feel like they’re going to a “bar” bar. People can shop, but they can also enjoy a beer. One of the things that’s been a super success has been the bars. We don’t make any two stores the same – we bring a core store, and we also say “why don’t we try some new things?” It’s very important for us to innovate. What drove the addition of the bigger bar with the wood-fired pizza operation? In opening the Colleyville store, Whole Foods touted the addition of the company’s second wood-fired pizza oven, a large adjoining bar and restaurant an expanded array of prepared foods and items from 60 local vendors.ĭixon – who joined Whole Foods as a grocery team member in 1984 and now oversees two dozen stores, a distribution center, two bakehouses and a culinary center – sat down for a Q&A with The Business Press: In general, the Texas economy is better than most other states. “I think there are some markets in the mid-cities that aren’t being served, and I think there’s some north-south opportunities in Dallas. “Assuming Fort Worth does well, I think there’s another store opportunity there,” Dixon said in an interview Tuesday after the company celebrated the grand opening of the Colleyville Boulevard store. The company also is planning a fall opening for a store at Highland Village in Denton County, summer 2015 opening in Uptown Dallas, and fall 2015 opening in Frisco. ![]() The highly sought-after Austin grocer announced earlier this year it would open a store at the planned Waterside development on the Trinity River in southwest Fort Worth in 2016.
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