Boulder-based Wild Oats Markets Inc. plans to close eight stores, including one in Fort Collins, next month.
The natural-foods retailer said Tuesday it will shutter five of its Henry’s Farmers Market stores in the Phoenix area and Wild Oats stores in Fort Collins, Omaha and West Jordan, Utah, on Dec. 16. It will not open another Henry’s Farmers Market that was under construction in Phoenix.
The closings will affect 420 employees, including 56 in Fort Collins. Employees will be offered transfers where opportunities exist, said Wild Oats spokeswoman Sonja Tuitele.
She expects the number of available positions for the Fort Collins workers to be high, because the company is opening a new prototype store in Boulder in the spring.
Wild Oats expects to incur a fourth-quarter charge of $25.5 million related to asset impairment, severance and lease-related liabilities resulting from the closings. The company also said it will pay incremental operational costs of about $1.7 million related to the closings.
The Fort Collins Wild Oats store is the retailer’s only location in that city, but it was hampered by a low-visibility location that was difficult to access, Tuitele said.
The Henry’s stores in Phoenix represented the company’s first effort to expand the Henry’s concept outside the Southern California market. The chain struggled with a lack of awareness in the already-crowded Phoenix market, Tuitele said.
“We’ve invested in those stores and tried various marketing and merchandising initiatives to get those stores to perform up to where we modeled them, and they just haven’t gotten there,” she said.
Wild Oats operates 115 natural-foods stores under the Wild Oats Natural Marketplace, Henry’s Farmers Market, Sun Harvest and Capers Community Market banners. It will open two more Henry’s in California in the next several weeks.
Staff writer Kristi Arellano can be reached at 303-954-1902 or karellano@denverpost.com.
