One of Boulder’s three Whole Foods stores gave away about 1,000 pounds of free frozen foods Thursday morning, a day after the grocer lost power during this week’s punishing snowstorm.

Frozen meat, seafood, groceries, bakery breads and pastries were all available outside the store at 2584 Baseline Road starting at 10:30 a.m., and it was all snatched up in about an hour.

“We were surprised at how fast word traveled,” said Heather Larrabee, executive marketing coordinator with Whole Foods. “It feels good knowing it didn’t go to waste.”

The Baseline Whole Foods lost power Wednesday as storm-related outages spread across Boulder County.

While Xcel Energy crews were working to restore power, and Whole Foods’ other two Boulder locations didn’t go dark. But store manager Rick Kramer said he doesn’t anticipate having power at the Baseline location until Friday or this weekend.

Rather than let the food go to waste, Kramer said store officials decided to give it away.

“We’re putting it out front as a gesture to the community instead of spoiling it,” Kramer said.

There were no limits on how much individuals could take.

“First come, first serve,” Kramer said.

Despite that, Boulder resident Whitney James said most of the people in line were passing food along and helping each other out.

“It actually wasn’t very crazy,” James said. “Everyone was passing food back. There were a few people at the front who were hoarding and were maybe taking too much. But everyone else was just having a great time. It was a really fun environment.”

James was accidentally hit in the face with a bag of frozen corn, but she got some frozen groceries for her trouble.

“I think it was cool of Whole Foods to support the community, and hopefully we were helping out, too, by not letting the food go to waste.”

Larrabee said in addition to giving some food away, the store has an ongoing partnership with Community Food Share and also has been in touch with local shelters about picking up more food this week.

“We just look at all this food and said, ‘How can we find a better way to work through this than just composting it?'” Larrabee said.

Larrabee said Kramer recalled a homeless woman coming to the giveaway with her children and getting enough food to feed all of them for the day.

“That brought a tear to my eye, hearing that,” Larrabee said.

Hours later, dispatchers could be heard communicating on the police scanner about people walking off with firewood and bags of ice — neither of which were part of the giveaway — from the front of the store.

When contacted, a Whole Foods manager told officers he was comfortable not following up on those reports.

Mitchell Byars: 303-473-1329, byarsm@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/mitchellbyars