Whole Foods To Open Health Resort And Spa

Whole Foods is expanding their empire outside of the grocery store realm. In addition to their successful, all-natural grocery stores, they now plan to open a healthy lifestyle resort in Austin, Tex.

"We have the perfect vehicle for this," Whole Foods co-founder John Mackey told USA Today. "Think of it as a center where people would go for a day, a weekend or a week for healthy lifestyle education."

The idea to open a health resort was prompted by Whole Foods' very successful in-house program designed to promote healthy eating and living amongst its employees. However, the all-natural food company tried to expand this program to the masses once before with their Wellness community programs, which ended up being ineffective. "It wasn't a total bomb, but we couldn't reach critical mass," Mackey told the newspaper.

Now, Mackey believes that opening a resort could be the best way to promote healthy living while gaining mass attention and wealth. They hope to open their resort within the next three years near their headquarters in Austin, Tex. However, only time will tell how long it will take to open such an establishment and if it will succeed. "It's an experiment, and you never know if experiments will be successful or not," Mackey added.

Skyler Bouchard is a junior writer for the Daily Meal. Follow her on twitter at @skylerbouchard.