Whole Foods will open a store Wednesday near DePaul University’s Lincoln Park campus, the second of seven former Dominick’s grocery stores slated to reopen this year as Whole Foods Markets.
Whole Foods acquired the sites a year ago after Dominick’s closed in 2013. Dominick’s parent company, Safeway Inc., announced in October 2013 that it would close Dominick’s after the 90-year-old Chicago grocery chain continued to lose money.
The 29,600-square-foot Whole Foods store at 959 W. Fullerton Ave. aims to serve the local neighborhoods as well as nearby university faculty, staff and students with house-made Neapolitan-style pizza; a build-your-own sandwich station; the Red Star Bar offering eight brews on tap; a food-rating system with labels denoting foods grown in an environmentally sustainable way, and a coffee window that will sell on-the-go coffee, smoothies and espresso drinks from a LaMarzocco espresso machine, the company said in a press release.
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An opening ceremony at 8:45 a.m. Wednesday will feature a bread-baking ceremony, followed by the store’s opening at 9 a.m. The first 500 people through the doors will get a Whole Foods gift card worth between $5 and $50. One customer will receive a $500 gift card.
Whole Foods is set to open a West Loop store at 1 N. Halsted St. on March 25 and a store at 6009 N. Broadway in Edgewater on April 29, followed by stores in suburban Elmhurst, Evanston and Willowbrook. No dates have been announced for the suburban stores’ openings.
Whole Foods opened its first renovated former Dominick’s store Jan. 28 at 255 E. Grand Ave. in Streeterville.