Yoke's Fresh Market is an employee-owned Spokane, Washington-based chain of grocery stores founded in 1946 by Marshall and Harriet Yoke. The chain was established by their son Chuck in the 1960s and now encompasses 13 stores in Washington and Idaho, primarily in the Spokane area. In 1990, Chuck sold the chain to the employees. John Bole currently directs company operations.
Recently, the chain had begun expanding towards the southeastern portion of Washington, with three stores in Pasco, Kennewick, and West Richland with another store planned in south Richland.
The chain specializes in fresh local produce (and of recently, had a bi-weekly promotion called "Fresh Friday", (which has specials on fresh produce, as well as seafood or fresh meat), and a once-a-month breakfast cereal sale on Fridays. However, starting on May 1 of 2009, a new promotion came into existence, known as 'The Fresh Board'. Weekly, promotions of groceries are posted outside the doors of the Yokes' markets, as well as the insides of the stores.
Yoke's also has a store-owned cattle company featuring 100% Hereford beef, as well as an in-store gourmet cheese shop featuring cheeses from all over the world. Also near the cheese shop are olive bars with a variety of brine-cured and oil-cured olives, as well as other relishes.
Many of the stores also have branches of Global Credit Union, some featuring drive-in banking.
Famous quotes containing the words yoke, fresh and/or market:
“When the chopper would praise a pine, he will commonly tell you that the one he cut was so big that a yoke of oxen stood on its stump; as if that were what the pine had grown for, to become the footstool of oxen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Flowers laugh before thee upon their beds
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, the whole country’s ready to let go. You heard of that market crash in ‘29? I predicted that.... I was nursing a director of General Motors. Kidney ailment, they said; nerves, I said. Then I asked myself, “What’s General Motors got to be nervous about?” “Overproduction,” I says. “Collapse.””
—John Michael Hayes (b. 1919)