{"id":8860,"date":"2017-02-20T09:19:53","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T09:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom.chainstoreguide.com\/?p=8860"},"modified":"2017-02-20T09:19:53","modified_gmt":"2017-02-20T09:19:53","slug":"whole-foods-charting-the-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/2017\/02\/whole-foods-charting-the-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Whole Foods: Charting the Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Whole Foods <\/strong>is officially struggling \u2013 in the opinion of just about everyone since the company released its first quarter earnings results last week. Pick a metric, and Whole Foods is likely moving in the wrong direction. Same-store sales, though, is getting much of the attention from reporters and analysts thanks to the company\u2019s sixth consecutive quarter of negative same-store sales.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chain Store Guide<\/strong> leveraged data from our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/c-87-supermarket-grocery-retailers-convenience-store-leads.aspx\">Supermarket, Grocery &amp; Convenience Store Chains<\/a> database (along with information from the Organic Trade Association and Whole Foods) to provide a visual snapshot of the challenge that faces Whole Foods.<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/email\/wholefoods_exclusive2017.jpg\" alt=\"Whole Foods\" name=\"Cont_0\" width=\"400\" \/><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/email\/wholefoods_exclusive2017.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Click Here To View Larger Image<\/a><\/center>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Six straight quarters of negative comps are obviously alarming, but the data points to a trend that dates back at least five years. The consensus as to the cause of Whole Foods\u2019 pain is, ironically, the growing popularity of organic food that Whole Foods helped spur.<\/p>\n<p>As organic food sales continue to rise on the back of consumer demand, everyone else from <strong>Walmart <\/strong>to<strong> Publix<\/strong> (not to mention the <strong>Sprouts <\/strong>and <strong>Trader Joes<\/strong> of the world) have dedicated increasing space to organic. Whole Foods is no longer the only game in town when it comes to organics, and its notoriously steep price points are magnified even more by the competition.<\/p>\n<p>CSG data shows that although net sales at Whole Foods have increased annually since 2012, its rate by which those sales have grown has declined dramatically, falling off a cliff in 2016. Whole Foods itself confirmed that this trend isn\u2019t likely to end as its updated guidance delivered\u00a0 last week walked back sales growth targets for 2017 to 1.5%, down from initial projections of 2.5% to 4.5% just three months ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whole Foods is officially struggling \u2013 in the opinion of just about everyone since the company released its first quarter earnings results last week. Pick a metric, and Whole Foods is likely moving in the wrong direction. Same-store sales, though, is getting much of the attention from reporters and analysts thanks to the company\u2019s sixth&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/2017\/02\/whole-foods-charting-the-challenge\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Whole Foods: Charting the Challenge<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"post-template-no-sidebar.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-8860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grocery-convenience","tag-csg-exclusive","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chainstoreguide.com\/offthechain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}