R.I.P. Denver Whole Foods mac and cheese bar

It’s the end of a quick, carb-filled, cheesy era. The Union Station Whole Foods mac and cheese bar is dead.

When we first reported on the chain’s first-ever mac and cheese bar, people got excited. Like really, really excited. Media outlets across the country picked up the story, spreading the news far and wide of what we described as a “4-foot-wide Promised Land of carbs and cheese.”

There was hysteria. There was mania. There may have even been tears of joy. And Denver was at the center of it all, home to the first-ever Whole Foods mac and cheese bar. What could be better?

Apparently, food people actually wanted to eat.

The Union Station Whole Foods opened in November 2017 with eight varieties of mac and cheese on the bar, including bacon cheeseburger mac, Buffalo chicken mac and vegan mac. During the first three weeks the store was open, 15,000 pounds of it had been sold. We even tried them all so you, dear readers, would know which varieties were worth the $9.99/pound price tag.

But by last summer, the mac and cheese options dropped to four or five a day. By this winter, they’d shrunk to just two or three.

So what happened?

According to a Whole Foods employee, mac and cheese sales plummeted in the summer. The heavy, comforting, carby, cheesy mac that inspired so much enthusiasm in the colder months didn’t appeal when temperatures soared.

The store pulled back the mac and leaned in to barbecue. The house-smoked pork and beef, along with baked beans, fries and greens, just flat-out sold better. There was no looking back and the store is sticking with the ‘que.

Today, mac and cheese lovers on a pilgrimage to the store will find regular mac and cheese, hatch green chile mac and cheese, and, if they’re lucky, one other bonus mac and cheese flavor. That’s it. No longer can we eat so many different mac flavors that we need two hands on which to count them. No longer can we wow our loved ones and ourselves with eight different containers of mac and cheese and call it dinner.

We’ll miss you, Whole Foods mac and cheese bar. Even if the reality of you never quite lived up to the idea of you, we’ll miss you.

Do you have a favorite place to get mac and cheese along the Front Range? Drop it in the comments for your fellow hungry readers.

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