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:
“A husband who submits to his wife’s yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman’s influence ought to be entirely concealed.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“In his very rejection of art Walt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect by certain means and he succeeded.... He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The market came with the dawn of civilization and it is not an invention of capitalism.... If it leads to improving the well-being of the people there is no contradiction with socialism.”
—Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931)