The parking lot was full and overflowing for the 9:30 a.m. grand opening of Lakewood Whole Foods this morning. The store’s employees, led by team leader Carmen Fort, sang a rewritten version of the "Cheers" theme, further driving home the fact that this new Whole Foods wants to be known as the neighborhood’s grocery store — "where everybody knows your name".
People tired a bit quickly of the obligatory opening day speeches, congratulatories and thank yous, and by 9:50, 10 minutes before the official opening time, the doors opened. The store is offering some great daily deals for the first 10 days, like $3.65 bottles of wine today (regularly $5.99) and two for $5 pizzas tomorrow (regularly $4.99 each). I couldn’t find the flier online, but it’s available at the store. People present at the opening didn’t receive any specials coupons, discounts or perks otherwise, except for the large "I love my home" bags, normally 99-cents, that they gave away with every purchase. (Of course, if I knew my store’s parking lot was going to be full and overflowing, I probably wouldn’t offer any special deals, either — that’s just throwing money out the window.)
The store was too crowded this morning to really enjoy exploring it,but I’m already thrilled about the expanded to-go meal offerings, especially the soup variety. I grabbed some butternut squash clam bisque, which was sitting right next to a vat of lobster chowder. Yum.
We here at the Advocate have followed the entire Lakewood Whole Foods journey, and now that the store is open, we’re going to sign off. After the jump, a brief history of the store, both on our blog and in our magazine, plus video footage from this morning:
Lakewood/East Dallas columnist Jeff Siegel predicted the closure of Minyard’s in his November 2006 column, and we created a photo essay of the longtime grocery store’s final day in our neighborhood. Before Minyard’s closed, Siegel broke the news about Whole Foods’ interest in the old Minyard’s property in January 2007. By April, it appeared that the target opening date was spring/summer 2008, and the company was still sticking to this story in July 2007. By October, however, Siegel had stated this was not going to happen because of a potential zoning change, and explained more in his November column.
The company filed its zoning request in December 2007, but less than two months later, had scrapped its plans for building a new store and decided to work with the existing Minyard’s shell. In May 2008 we received details on the new store’s features, as well as architectural renderings, with an expected January 2009 opening date. We set up the Whole Foods web cam in July, which caught a rooftop fire in October.
The grand opening plans were announced in early February 2009, and we followed with a story on the zoning history of Gaston and Abrams, a podcast, and a sneak preview video tour. Photography editor Can Turkyilmaz shot more video footage of the store’s grand opening this morning (find it below), so you can sense the fervor if you weren’t there to experience it. (It’s less than a minute long, so no huge time commitment is required.)
And that’s all, folks. The Lakewood Whole Foods is open, so there’s no more speculation; if you want to know about something inside, you’d probably rather go and experience it for yourself than read what we have to say about it. Happy shopping, and we’ll probably see you there for lunch on occasion.
