Biography|John Mackey — The Flagship on Lamar Where Headquarters Moved Upstairs

In 2005 Whole Foods opened a flagship store at 525 North Lamar Boulevard, at West Sixth.

Company offices sat at 550 Bowie Street, above the shop.

John Mackey had been chief executive since the first store in 1980.

By 2005 the company was already public, after a 1992 listing.

It had stores across the United States.

It had opened in Canada in 2002.

The new building sat a few blocks south of the 900-block shop that flooded in 1981.

Austin still treats this corner as the company's home address.

The Lamar store remains a working supermarket.

The offices upstairs were the headquarters from which Mackey ran the chain through its last independent decade.

A visitor can walk the grocery floor today.

The original 1980 room is not here.

This is the building the company chose when it wanted a public face on Lamar.

Headquarters and flagship share the same block.

That is the point of the pin.

The 2010 photograph of the complex still matches the massing a visitor sees from the boulevard.

Mackey worked from this address until Amazon bought the company in 2017 and until he left the chief executive job in 2022.

Photo: LoneStarMike, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (headquarters, July 2010). Portrait: Mike Gifford, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, 2017.