Whole Foods Market
Ranks First
for Grocery Store Trust

| published May 9, 2026 |

By Thursday Review staff

Whole Foods Market was ranked number one on Newsweek’s annual survey listing the most trustworthy companies and brands for 2026. The Texas-based grocery chain beat out retail giant Kroger, Oklahoma-based Quik Trip, and Lakeland, Florida-based Publix. Publix had occupied the number one spot in this same survey for almost a decade.

The Newsweek survey ranks companies on trustworthiness by numerous categories, such as financial, banking, consumer products, healthcare, and insurance. The rankings are drawn from evaluations by U.S. consumers and customers, data derived from a variety of media and social media tools (what it calls Social Listening), and interaction with as many as 25,000 U.S. residents over the previous year.

Whole Foods opened its first store in Austin, Texas in 1980. It was in essence a “health food store” by the standards of the 1970s and 1980s, and came about more-or-less as a merger of two smaller local health food stores—SaferWay and Clarksville Natural Grocery. Austin, a massive college town with multiple large campuses (Austin is home to six major schools, including the University of Texas at Austin and Texas State University), was at that time an ideal geographic footprint for Whole Foods’ early success. By the middle 1980s, Whole Foods began to grow into other markets, including stores in Houston and Dallas, and then into areas outside of Texas.

A significant element in Whole Foods long-term strategy included acquisition of similar retail stores in other markets. Indeed, Whole Foods’ most substantial growth came by way of its purchases of stores in North Carolina, California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Florida. In 2001, Whole Foods bought the famous Harry’s Farmers Market stores in Atlanta and surrounding areas.

According to data analytics company Scrap Hero, Whole Foods currently operates 532 retail stores in 45 states, with 93 of those grocery stores in California. Florida is second with 37 stores, including some new stores scheduled to open in May and June. The company’s home state of Texas has the third most Whole Food retail locations, with 36 stores. Scrape Hero also offers its own indicator of Whole Foods’ reliability among its customers with a score of 84.37% customer satisfaction (based on 574 individual reviews).

On its website, Whole Foods list among its core values “…the Highest Quality Natural and Organic Foods,” and a commitment to “…satisfy and delight our customers.” Whole Foods also stresses its win-win relationships with its partners, vendors and suppliers.

Whole Foods is expanding quickly in several parts of the country, but not as fast as Aldi. Aldi recently surpassed Kroger as the nation’s largest grocery retailer after it opened scores of new stores in 2023 and 2024, and completed its conversion of some Winn-Dixie locations after its buyout of most of the Winn-Dixie footprint.

Whole Foods also retains customer loyalty despite the occasional setback. Last year, a cyberattack took down most of the computer systems for United Natural Foods, Inc (UNFI), which is the largest of Whole Foods distributors and suppliers. The cyberattack left the Rhode Island-based UNFI paralyzed, and left many Whole Foods stores unable to fill shelves or fulfill orders, and left some Whole Foods stores with too little or too much inventory. The cyberattack also impacted some of the trucking companies used to transport the foods and products.

Still, both companies were able to quickly resolve the issue, though it proved significantly costly for both Whole Foods and UNFI as the supply chain problems lasted for more than a week.


Related Thursday Review articles:

Publix Ranks Fourth Nationally in Grocer Trustworthiness; Thursday Review staff; Thursday Review; April 29, 2026.

Aldi's Ambitious Expansions; By R. Alan Clanton, Thursday Review editor; February 13, 2026.