Menu Plans and Recipes

Still haven’t put together your Thanksgiving menu? Not to worry! Our holiday pages have complete holiday menus already planned out for you. Choose recipes specially crafted to meet your needs, from Thanksgiving for a Smaller Crowd and a Gluten-Free Thanksgiving to a Vegetarian Meal or a Classic Feast. You can even build your shopping list right from the recipes. Stop by our store to pick up the ingredients and you’ll be cooking in no time.

Shopping Help

When you’re in the store, visit our Holiday Table. The folks there can help even the most frazzled dinner host.

Meals To-Go

Not up for cooking? While it’s a little late to place an official order for your Thanksgiving meal, our Prepared Foods team members are still cranking out the side dishes and rolls and pies – yum! Some stores are even serving prepared turkey in their hot bars and chef cases, too. Just roll up your cart and fill it with goodies.

Wine

What about a celebratory wine to go with the meal? Never fear. Our Top Ten Holiday Wines give you get great tasting quality wines at affordable prices – all under a bottle.

Host(ess) Gifts

Heading to someone else’s house for dinner? Don’t arrive empty handed. Stop in for flowers, wine, sides, pies – anything you want to contribute, we’ve got you covered.

Store Hours

Many of our stores are open for extended hours leading up to Thanksgiving and open for a few hours on Thanksgiving Day itself. Give your local store a call to find out what hours they’re open.

Your Whole Foods Market team members are here for you! We love this week. Really! Have a happy, healthy and delicious Thanksgiving everyone!

Whole Story

From THE NEW YORK TIMES
Excerpted

Organic Recipes, Organic Food, Local Food, Small Farms, Family Farms, Edible Landscapes, Shop Local – OrganicToBe.org

When our Upper West Side store was built at 97th and Columbus–on the very corner where the highly revered New York jazz venue, Mikell’s Jazz Club, once stood–some of the eclectic neighborhood’s long-time residents were concerned about how this new store would change their neighborhood. To demonstrate its commitment to honoring the neighborhood’s heritage, Whole Foods Market Team Members partnered with the Jazz Foundation of America, Sugar Hill Brewery in Harlem, and community activists and organizations to create the Jazz Legend Series. This series–which kicked off shortly after Upper West Side opened in 2009– recently began its second fall run. Each Friday evening during the series, the store is filled with the sounds of true, high-quality jazz performances. And due to its efforts to become a true part of its community, the Upper West Side store has not only been embraced by once-skeptical local residents, but has also become a unique gathering place where neighbors come to shop, eat, and be with each other while enjoying some amazing music.

Check out the Upper West Side’s store page to learn more about upcoming performances in the series.

Whole Story

It’s our big 3-0 this month. What a crazy, fun ride since we opened that first store in Austin, Texas on September 20, 1980. In the following 30 years, we grew from 19 team members in one small store to more than 55,000 team members in nearly 300 stores in the U.S, Canada and the U.K. Wow!

We hope you’ll join us in celebrating three decades of offering the highest quality natural and organic foods and supporting organic agriculture, environmental stewardship and local producers. All 298 stores companywide are celebrating this milestone with parties and events from September 17-20. You’re invited! Just visit your local store web page to learn about their 30th birthday festivities.

You’ll see a number of blog posts in the lead up to our actual birthday – sharing some fun facts and letting you know about special 30th birthday products from some of our long-time vendor partners.

To kick it off, here are a few of the milestones and fun facts from our journey.

1980 Thanks to all the Beetles in the parking lot, people joke that it’s hard to tell the difference between a VW dealer and the first Whole Foods Market store.

1981 The single Whole Foods Market store is severely flooded, the community rallies and helps begin the clean up, and then 12 Team Members work tirelessly to reopen within just 28 days.

1985 Whole Foods Market is already working to reduce the use of hazardous pesticides, and the Organic Trade Association is established, giving the organic movement new momentum.

1989 When we opened our first Whole Foods Market California store in 1989, no one showed up for the job fair.

1993 Since 1993, we’ve given back at least 5% of our after-tax profits to the community through quarterly 5% days as well as donations to non?profits and schools.

1997 Whole Foods Market introduces quality to value, releasing our first 365 Everyday Value® brand products.

1998 The first proposed National Organic Standards rule allows the use of GMOs, biosolids (sewage sludge) and irradiation in products labeled organic. We rally customers and team members in a successful store-based, letter-writing campaign and the rules are rewritten!

1998 Whole Foods Market makes the first FORTUNE magazine “100 Best Companies to Work For” list (and continues to make it year after year).

2003 Whole Foods Market becomes America’s first National Certified Organic Grocer.

2004 As a result of an idea presented by team members, the Green Mission Task Force, concerned with addressing recycling and environmental issues company-wide, is created.

2008 On Earth Day, Whole Foods Market was the first U.S. supermarket to completely eliminate disposable plastic grocery bags to help protect the environment and conserve resources. Since then, it has kept 100+ million bags out of landfills.

2009 We add a 7th Core Value: Promoting the health of our stakeholders through healthy eating education.

2010 Team member donations (via elective payroll deductions) to the Whole Planet Foundation hits more than .3 million, empowering more than 7,300 impoverished entrepreneurs to lift themselves out of poverty.

You can find lots more on our 30th Birthday web page. Got a milestone for your journey with Whole Foods Market? We’d love to hear!

Whole Story

When relocating our long-revered Lincoln Park store in Chicago down the street to its new Kingsbury Street location, we made a conscious effort to create an environment that pays homage to the surrounding neighborhood and to the city of Chicago itself. In the process, we gained a talented new Team Member, a one-of-a-kind work of in-store art, and developed an ongoing partnership with a local kid-focused organization. Check out this video to learn the Lincoln Park story, and to see another example of how Whole Foods Market connects to the communities we serve.

Whole Story

When relocating our long-revered Lincoln Park store in Chicago down the street to its new Kingsbury Street location, we made a conscious effort to create an environment that pays homage to the surrounding neighborhood and to the city of Chicago itself. In the process, we gained a talented new Team Member, a one-of-a-kind work of in-store art, and developed an ongoing partnership with a local kid-focused organization. Check out this video to learn the Lincoln Park story, and to see another example of how Whole Foods Market connects to the communities we serve.

Whole Story

When we open up a new Whole Foods Market store, we work hard to establish meaningful connections with our neighbors so that every store becomes a unique reflection of the community it serves. We get deeply involved with locally-based non-profit organizations and we partner with local artisans to create one-of-a-kind artwork and store decor that expresses the history, geography, population and personality of the neighborhood, including using local and repurposed materials in our buildings, fixtures and displays.

This is all highly evident in our Mountain Brook store in Birmingham, Alabama. Throughout the design phase, we learned about the history of Birmingham and how the Mountain Brook community came to be. Using neighborhood signs for inspiration and images from historical centers of the city, Birmingham history and present day were melded together. In the store, you’ll see the backdrop of the Sloss Furnace, which gives reverence to the city’s past while ironwork reflecting local neighborhood street signs brings in the surrounding community flavor. We also sought out folk artists to bring an Alabama flair into the store’s café seating area, and that’s how the quilts of Gee’s Bend—whose creators are the focus of this video—became a permanent part of the store’s décor and a way for us to celebrate local art rich in the history of Alabama culture.

This video is just the first of several we’re working on that will focus on some of our special community connections. Who knows? Maybe your favorite store will be the next one featured!

Whole Story