BERKELEY — A week after organic produce powerhouse Whole Foods Market opened on Gilman Street, a Georgia purveyor of gourmet burgers added to the cosmopolitan mélange of this rapidly gentrifying West Berkeley commercial strip.

Farm Burgers opened right across Gilman on Ninth Street last week in a converted light industrial building that it shares with two other recent arrivals: Philz Coffee (Cup of Love), in July, and Doughnut Dolly, in August.

It is the first West Coast store for Farm Burger, which also has three stores in Georgia and one in North Carolina.

Pic Walker, the Berkeley store’s manager and part owner, said he looked at five or six venues in Marin County and the East Bay before settling on Gilman Street.

“There is a buzz around here,” Walker said, adding, “We thought we’d be a good fit, with Whole Foods.”

At lunchtime one day this week, a sizable crowd poured in to sample the $7.25 “Build it” burger with choice of grass-fed beef, chicken, pastured pig or vegan quinoa and llano seco heirloom bean patty. There’s a $8.95 lunch special, a $10 daily combo, farm salads, milkshakes, floats, and wine and beer, including several local drafts.

“Our cattle are fattened and finished on sweet grass, never fed antibiotics or growth hormones, and always humanely raised and handled,” reads the store’s framed credo on a wall in the spacious 1,800-square-foot interior — there also is outdoor seating. “Our menu is chef driven, seasonal, and sourced from local farms.”

Also on the wall is a picture of a cow in a lush field of clover, with Mt. Diablo in the background. The cow, in its “near-end product” stage, as Walker put it, was at Bill Niman’s BN Ranch in Brentwood, which supplies the beef to Farm Burger, an adherent of the locavore philosophy. Another photo shows hills near the Los Vaqueros Reservoir, where Niman’s cattle enjoy winter grazing rights.

“Our food makes ethical eating easy,” the store credo concludes.

Farm Burger’s immediate neighborhood has undergone rapid transition. Upstairs is Firehouse Art Co. and Gilman Studios; down Ninth Street is Nomadic Traders, Two Star Dog (women’s clothing) and For Your Dogs Only (dog and cat beds).

Around the corner at Gilman and 10th streets is T-Rex restaurant and bar; down the street are Soccer Pro, Road Runner Sports, Eastern Classics Japanese furniture, Serena & Lily Outlet, Stella Studio, Fitness Evolved and Krav Maga Xtreme self-defense.﻿

Office Depot, on 10th Street, provides a more mainstream touch.

The Gilman District is not yet formally defined, but if gentrification is the theme, it would seem to extend, for now, for a few blocks from 10th Street west. East of 10th Street is the Dollar Tree store, and nearby on yet-ungentrified San Pablo Avenue, Church’s Fried Chicken and McDonald’s.

Already Whole Foods seems to be shaping decorum on its periphery. On Opening Day Nov. 4, two people lounged on a mattress just beyond the edge of the store’s parking lot. A week later, two security guards in animated conversation patrolled the lot, the area clear of any homeless presence.

Amid the applause that greeted Whole Foods’ opening, not everybody is happy.

“We’re losing Grocery Outlet. We’re getting Whole Foods,” grumbled Berkeley Human Welfare Commissioner and homeless advocate James Reagan. A plan to demolish the Grocery Outlet discount store a mile south at Fourth Street and University Avenue and build a five-story, mixed-use project awaits city approval.

Jordan Klein, Economic Development Project Coordinator for the city, said his office is “enthusiastic about the retail node developing in the Gilman Street area.”

“Obviously Whole Foods will generate significant sales tax revenue for the City,” Klein said in an email. “Some of the other new businesses in that area — including Philz Coffee and Donut Dolly — are native Bay Area businesses that are producing outstanding products. All of those businesses should benefit from the new cluster of activity on Gilman, and attract customers from West Berkeley and beyond.”

Contact Tom Lochner at 510-262-2760. Follow him at Twitter.com/tomlochner.