Who owns Whole Foods?

Amazon, completely. Whole Foods Market has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon since August 2017, when Amazon bought it for 13.7 billion dollars. The organic supermarket that built its whole identity on being the ethical, local-feeling, small-producer alternative to corporate grocery is owned outright by the largest retailer on earth. There is no minority stake and no independence left to parse: Amazon owns 100% of it.

This one belongs in the same file as a few others we’ve written, because it’s the same trick. A brand whose entire appeal is “not the faceless giant” turns out, when you check, to be the faceless giant.

Wasn’t Whole Foods the anti-corporate one?

That was the whole pitch, and it’s exactly why the ownership matters.

Whole Foods was founded in Austin, Texas in 1980 by John Mackey and three others, who merged two small natural-food shops into one. For nearly forty years it grew on a reputation as the antithesis of big-box grocery: local suppliers, organic standards, a co-op sensibility, the shop where conscientious shoppers went precisely to avoid the corporate chains. It became a public company in 1992 and expanded across the US, Canada and Britain.

Then in 2017 Amazon bought it in an all-cash deal, and the anti-corporate supermarket became a limb of the most powerful corporation in retail history. Prices were cut, Amazon Prime became the loyalty scheme, Amazon lockers appeared by the tills, and the shop that sold itself as the alternative to Amazon-scale commerce became one of Amazon’s physical storefronts. The aprons and the wooden crates stayed. The owner changed entirely.

Is Whole Foods coming to the UK?

It’s already here and expanding fast, which is why this is worth knowing now rather than later. After years with a single London shop, Whole Foods reopened on the King’s Road in 2025 and is doubling its UK presence through 2026, opening six more London stores to reach twelve, in Angel, Liverpool Street, Notting Hill Gate, Canary Wharf, Monument and St James’s. Tellingly, five of the six are moving into units Amazon vacated when it shut down its Amazon Fresh shops: the same owner, swapping one grocery brand for the better-loved one. If a Whole Foods opens near you looking like the answer to soulless supermarkets, it’s worth remembering whose property it is.

Is Whole Foods British? Is it independent?

Neither. It’s an American chain, headquartered in Austin, Texas, owned by Amazon in Seattle, running around 550 stores across the US, Canada and the UK. Under our definition, independence means locally owned and operated, and Whole Foods fails it as completely as any business we’ve looked at: a multinational chain wholly owned by a two-trillion-dollar corporation. The word “whole” and the farmers’-market styling don’t change the ownership; they’re the reason it’s worth stating plainly.

How did Whole Foods end up like this?

1980. John Mackey and three others open the first Whole Foods in Austin, Texas.
1981. The company floats on the stock market and begins expanding nationally. 2004 onward. Whole Foods becomes the flagship name in organic and natural-food retail across the US, and enters the UK.
1982. Amazon buys Whole Foods for 13.7 billion dollars. It becomes a wholly-owned Amazon subsidiary.
1983. Whole Foods reopens on the King’s Road in London, its first new UK store in over a decade.
1984. Amazon closes its Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go shops and doubles Whole Foods’ UK footprint to twelve, mostly in former Amazon Fresh units, as part of a plan for 100 new stores.

So where does that leave you?

With a clear example of why the question is worth asking at all. Whole Foods is the best-styled corporate grocer in the world: everything about it, the crates, the loose grains, the local-producer signage, is designed to feel like the opposite of a giant chain, and it is owned by the biggest one there is. None of that is hidden, exactly. It’s just not on the sign, and most shoppers never think to check.

If what you want is actual local food, the greengrocer, the butcher, the farm shop, the deli where the person at the counter owns the place, that’s a different search, and it’s the one we’re built for. Genuinely independent food shops still exist in most towns; they’re just quieter than a brand with Amazon’s budget behind it.

Last verified 1 September 2026. Ownership from Amazon’s own 2017 acquisition and its 2026 UK store announcements; Whole Foods is a wholly-owned Amazon subsidiary and files no separate accounts.