We Landed a Private Tour of Whole Foods' Flagship Store — Here's What We Learned — Grocery Stores Across America

The story of Texas' most famous grocery store mirrors that of the city it grew up in. Just as Austin expanded beyond its liberal-minded, hippy roots, live-music-capital reputation, and famous "Keep Austin Weird" bumper-sticker identity, so too did its natural-foods emporium Whole Foods, which opened in the state capital in 1980.

Now Austin attracts more than 230,000 attendees for its annual South by Southwest Festival (a big difference compared to the 700 that attended the first event in 1987), and it serves as home to more than 100 tech companies, including Apple, Dell, IBM, Oracle, Indeed, and Amazon, which bought Whole Foods last year for $13.4 billion.

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