PORTLAND (AP) – Whole Foods Market will close its newly acquired Wild Oats Marketplace within three months and is considering opening a second Portland-area store in the next two years, a company official said.

The announcement comes a week after Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods completed its $565 million acquisition of rival Wild Oats, based in Boulder, Colo.

The 86 Wild Oats employees in Portland will be offered jobs at the Whole Foods store, located four blocks away in the city’s Bayside neighborhood.

Whole Foods needs more workers because revenues are 50 percent higher than anticipated since it opened its first Maine store in February. The brisk business also has company officials examining high-traffic areas for a second store within five miles of its current store.

One possibility is the fast-growing Maine Mall area in South Portland and Scarborough, said Whole Foods Regional Vice President David Lannon.

“With the success of this store, there are a bunch of other potential areas where we’re looking,” Lannon said.

Whole Foods is the world’s largest natural and organic foods supermarket chain, with 189 stores in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. After the sale was completed last week, Whole Foods began announcing plans on how it would consolidate Wild Oats, which has about 110 stores.

Whole Foods has no plans to raise prices with it purchase of the Wild Oats chain because it still has to compete against conventional supermarkets, where natural and organic food selections are expanding, Lannon said.

Whole Foods is now in a better position to cut prices and overcome the image that its prices are high, food industry analysts said.

With more stores, Whole Foods can pressure suppliers to lower wholesale costs, said Scott Van Winkle, a managing director at Canaccord Adams, a financial services firm in Boston. If that happens, Whole Foods can then lower retail costs and win over shoppers from conventional supermarkets, he said.

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Information from: Portland Press Herald, https://www.pressherald.com

AP-ES-09-05-07 0912EDT