Whole Foods 365 was a spin-off of the Whole Foods brand that offered daily grocery items at lower prices than the main Whole Foods Stores, which are a bit more upmarket.
Apart from pricing, the Whole Food 365 stores were also smaller than the original Whole Foods stores. This allowed them to stock only everyday value products, along with a few branded and local products.
The first Whole Foods 365 store opened in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake in 2016. Following this, eleven more Whole Foods 365 stores were opened in the US in the next three years before its closure.
Within three years of their opening, Whole Foods decided to shut down all of its 365 brand stores. This was triggered by Amazon acquiring Whole Foods in August 2017.
Post the acquisition, Amazon started lowering the prices of the products available in the main Whole Foods stores. Moreover, they also offered discounts to Prime members. These factors consequently led to a decrease in the price gap between the core Whole Foods brand stores and 365 stores.
John Mackey (CEO of Whole Foods) in his official email confirmed this as following:
“However, as we have been consistently lowering prices in our core Whole Food Market stores over the last past year, the price distinction between the two brands has become less relevant. As the company continues to focus on lowering prices over time, we believe that the price gap will further diminish.”
Due to this smaller price gap, the Whole Foods 365 chain lost its relevance. The company decided to pull the plug on the service and to convert the existing 365 stores into the regular Whole Foods Stores brand.
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