Whole Foods is adding another product to its long list--beer.
According to the Huffington Post, the company has announced plans to brew its own beer. About 360 Whole Food markets already sell beer that is made by more than 500 different companies.
A Whole Foods Market outpost will open in on Houston's Post Oak Boulevard later this year with plans to make its own beer. Other supermarkets have sold beer under their own product line, but the Huffington Post reported that Whole Food could possibly be the first to oversee the brewing in-house.
The store recently put out an application for the company's first brewmaster. Nichole Becerra, who oversees the beer programs for all the Whole Foods in the Southwest, told the Huffington Post that the brewery experiment is considered an outgrowth for the company.
"As we developed our beer program and made it better, putting beer bars in our stores and offering growlers in our stores, it just seemed like a natural evolution for us," Becerra said.
The Huffington Post reported that Becerra's team is inviting local employees to send in suggestions for label names. Becerra said the name should be something fun and added that the company is looking to hire someone who is experienced in brewing beer.
There have been no reports on whether the beer will be made at the Houston location or will be sold anywhere else in the country. Kate Neu, a marketing coordinator at Whole Foods Corporate, did not mention if the company has plans to build more breweries in the future, but did mention potential for the experiment to expand nationally.
"That's what started to happen with in-store bars," Neu said. "In a few regions, the stores started playing with it, and it became a widespread practice that's working really well. So that's definitely a hope the same thing could happen with breweries."
Beccera reportedly has confident that Whole Foods experiment stating: "I think it's going to be way better than any kind of private label in-house beer that you're going to find on the shelf."
Would you buy beer brewed by Whole Foods?
