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:
“Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightiest well be taken now for the sea- chariot of the sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring the sun to ye! Yoke on the further billows ... I drive the sea!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“But the nomads were the terror of all those whom the soil or the advantages of the market had induced to build towns. Agriculture therefore was a religious injunction, because of the perils of the state from nomadism.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)