Colonie

Whole Foods' new supermarket at Colonie Center is the first in what the chain plans to be a number of Capital Region stores, said Christina Minardi, president of the Northeast region.

Opening June 18, the Whole Foods Market will occupy 32,000 square feet in the southwest corner of what was once part of the Sears store. It will be the first store in the state outside the New York City area, though a Buffalo store is in development.

"We anticipate opening other stores in the Albany market," Minardi said on Wednesday. "After we open the store, we get a sense of where our customers might be coming from. We always anticipated this being a multiple-store market."

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The chain's management has been impressed with the anticipation for the Capital Region store. Its Whole Foods Market Albany Facebook page, launched in January, has more than 11,000 followers.

"We don't do cookie-cutter stores. We design every store to fit into every market we're in," Minardi said. "Albany took us five to six months to design."

Minardi, who oversees Whole Foods' stores in New York, Connecticut and most of New Jersey, does not have a specific number of local outlets in mind.

"We're very selective in our real-estate process," she said. "We spend a lot of time looking at the site plan and the entrances."

While opening a supermarket inside a mall might seem an unusual choice, Minardi said, Colonie Center made sense to her.

"We've been very successful in malls," she said.

The Paramus, N.J., store is in a mall, she said, and the chain has partnered with Sears in multiple locations.

"It really works out well," she said. "We have great parking. Since we're on that corner and it's great visibility, it really worked."

Whole Foods hired 227 local workers and transferred 30 to 40 people from other stores — some of whom are Capital Region natives.

"It's important for us to have those original team members," she said. "They are the seeds that start the culture to grow."

The chain based in Austin, Texas, will be the latest addition to the region's growing supermarket options, including The Fresh Market in Latham and Saratoga Springs, nearby Trader Joe's on Wolf Road, and the four ShopRite supermarkets that have opened in recent years. Price Chopper has expanded multiple stores and built the Market Bistro supermarket in Latham, which it bills as the grocery store of the future. Hannaford, too, has renovated stores, and Target and Wal-Mart have expanded their grocery businesses.

While other markets have increased their share of organics, Minardi said none of them hold to the same standards as Whole Foods. The chain focuses on animals being treated well, not caged or unable to roam freely, as well as on meat that is free from growth hormones.

"We have faced competition for as long as we've been open," she said. "Whole Foods Market has a tremendous amount of standards. (Others) don't have the seafood standards. They don't have the animal treatment standards. We really walk our talk. It's who we are. Trader Joe's, they do a great job on some things but they don't have any standards. They have great candy but they use preservatives."

The store also prides itself on working closely with local producers.

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At the dairy counter, for example, customers can learn not only what farm the milk comes from but a little about the farmers themselves.

For the Colonie store, Whole Foods is working with 52 upstate producers to sell their products.

"Local is really important to us," Minardi said.

The opening of the Colonie store comes at a time when Whole Foods is facing substantial criticism: Its stock performance in the past year is the worst among Fortune 500 companies. Critics have said it is being hurt by its reputation for high prices — the chain is sometimes jokingly referred to as "Whole Paycheck" — and by its own success, with more and more markets offering the natural and organic products the chain once sold almost exclusively.

Others have said Whole Foods is structurally sound, with a higher per-store earnings rate than other supermarkets. Its earnings reports cited slower than anticipated growth, but its revenues are still growing.

The chain, which currently has 385 stores, has another 105 in development, 15 in the Northeast, Minardi said.

"We are growing at a pretty rapid pace," she said. "In the long run, steps we have taken in the last year are going to make us a healthier, healthier company. Our numbers do stack up well against all our competitors. ... When we have a little hiccup like we did at our last earnings, we are really good at turning that around."

She says the reputation of being high-priced is outdated and inaccurate.

"If you really shop our store, that's an old rumor," she said. "We are priced in the marketplace. We've worked really hard on that."

tobrien@timesunion.com • 518-454-5092 • @timobrientu