Whole Foods Market Shuttering East Austin Catering Kitchen, Resulting In 90-Plus Layoffs

EAST AUSTIN, TX — Whole Foods Market officials recently alerted state regulators of plans to close the company's catering kitchen by next month, a move resulting in more than 90 layoffs.

In the most recent batch of Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification ( WARN ) Act notifications sent to Patch, Whole Foods officials alert to the upcoming April 30 closure of the catering kitchen located at 6201 Bolm Rd., resulting in 93 layoffs.

In correspondence requested by Patch accompanying the notification, a company official wrote it was anticipated the displaced workers would be relocated to other Whole Foods stores in the Austin area.

"The location is being closed and operations will be moved to other locations within the Austin/San Antonio area," Eva Clark, executive coordinator of teams members services, wrote in the letter received by the Texas Workforce Commission on March 2.

Companies with more than 100 employees planning layoffs are compelled to provide advance notice of plant closings and mass layoffs of employees as part of the WARN Act, a U.S. labor law. This notice gives workers enough time to seek other employment.

"All affected employees have been notified of the upcoming closures and we have been working closely with them to transition them to another location," Clark wrote TWC officials. "At this time, we anticipate being able to place a majority of the affected team members at alternate locations."

Clark noted in her letter that none of the affected workers are represented by a union. It's also not possible to discern the type of workers affected, given that the TWC recently began excluding job descriptions from corporate correspondence that media outlets have to separately request. For years, the TWC included job descriptions provided by companies of workers affected by layoffs, but recently stopped the practice for reasons of privacy as one TWC official recently told Patch in a telephone conversation.

Given the dearth of information on job descriptions among the layoffs, it's impossible to ascertain the accuracy of the company's claims that it will likely match affected workers with slots at its other Whole Foods locations in Central Texas located in Bee Cave, the Arboretum area in northwest Austin, the North Austin location at The Domain and the Arbor Trails store in South Austin. The company operates its downtown flagship store at 525 N. Lamar Blvd.

Whole Foods employs nearly 90,000 workers in a 460-store chain around the world, with roughly 2,500 of those located in Central Texas.

>>> Photo credit: Jared Preston via Wikimedia Commons