Whole Foods - Ripe Target

[Dover]

Ripe Target

To its fans, the US supermarket chain Whole Foods Market is proof that green shopping can be glamorous. But its critics claim the store has got greedy and betrayed its organic ideals. And now it's coming to Britain. Alex Renton reports

Tuesday March 27, 2007
The Guardian

'Love where you shop!" proclaim the signs at the entrance to the vast branch of Whole Foods Market in Austin, Texas. Yeah, right, you think. You wouldn't get that sort of tosh at Tesco - they couldn't take the ridicule. But shopping at America's only natural foods superstore chain is seductive in a way no British aisle-basher has ever known. Even at nine in the evening, everyone in the shop - students, nurses, workers from the nearby State Capitol building, where George W Bush once ruled - seemed to want to be there. There were customers on dates: at the little trattoria near the cheese counter, a pair in their 20s told me they came to the supermarket most weeks for dinner.

"Couple got engaged here the other day," smiled the burly chef behind the counter, tossing up fresh tagliatelle with an organic heirloom tomato sauce. When I emerged clutching my trophies - a jar of alder wood-smoked sea salt, a cherimoya fruit "hand-picked in Mexico", a freshly baked organic knish - I wondered if doing the supermarket run would ever be the same again.

Whole Foods shops are supermarkets - but not as we know them. Pile it high, sell it cheap, the business plan of Tesco's founder Jack Cohen, remains the dominating ethos of the British trade. John Mackey, the founder, chairman and CEO of the $5.6bn (£2.85bn) Whole Foods Market, piles it pretty and sells it nice. But Mackey is more messianic in his quotes. His is a company "based on love, not on fear". "Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet" is the slogan. "We believe in a virtuous circle embracing the food chain, human beings and mother earth," proclaims another sign at the store's entrance. There are a lot of signs in a Whole Foods Market - all part of making you feel like a better, healthier, happier shopper.

There are many sceptics but there is no denying that through his green-tinged supermarket chain, Mackey has introduced the ethics of food supply to the American mainstream. As one organic vegetable farmer, a rare breed in Texas, told me: "You can't argue with one thing - if it wasn't for Whole Foods we'd still be handing out leaflets telling folk what organic is."

..snip..

For all that, the fundamental green movement in America has fallen out of love with Mackey and his shops. One reason is that the core promise of the stores "to offer the highest quality, least processed, most flavourful and naturally preserved foods" is plainly not borne out in the aisles. The rank of chiller cabinets stocking "natural" TV dinners is just one example. It's "whole foods-lite" - what the market can take, not what the rhetoric would suggest.

The other is more elemental - that big cannot be good. Supermarket chains and sustainable, natural food production just aren't compatible. Michael Pollan devoted a section of his 2006 book The Omnivore's Dilemma to a devastating critique of Big Organic, as exemplified by the rise of Whole Foods and the industrialisation of organic agriculture in the US. Many of the pioneering whole earth and organic farms in the west coast region have been taken over by the same grand agricultural corporations they were set up to oppose. One vast operation in California grows 80% of all America's organic lettuces. An issue that particularly bothers Pollan and his followers is the issue of local sourcing - not least jetting in asparagus from South America in January. Whole Foods is unashamedly pulling in produce from all over the world...cont'd

http://www.guardian.co.uk/supermarkets/story/0,,2043674,00.html

[anitar1]

1. Here in Eugene, we have many organic stores.

A year or so ago, Whole Foods wanted to come in and many of our local politicians were bending over backwards to bring them here. Seems many of the locals were not thrilled about it and protested the lengths the city wanted to go to for WF. Eventually Whole Foods decided not to locate here. Good news for all of us. We like our locally owned markets.

[Dover]

2. I avoid shopping at the newest and hugest WF in downtown Austin.

It's noisy, confusing and hyper. I long for the laid back, quieter, small stores with fewer choices but better quality. It's like they took a good idea and fed it steroids.

And it should be noted that the general impetus for this innovative type of grocery buying experience seems to have originated first with a local Texas chain called HEB who created a hybrid called Central Market in Austin long before WF adopted this style. And they were big competition for WF in Austin even though they didn't cater quite so much to healthy/organic as they did to vast variety (very multi-cultural in choices) and quality, high end. And it seems that WF has adopted this as well.

Very sad, but maybe there is now a market for new local stores that get back to stricter basics as regards the organic theme, since WF is sort of abandoning that now. It used to be that I could shop with a certain peace of mind at WF knowing that the organic label meant something and that the quality control was strong. Not anymore.

[youngdem]

3. Central Market was launched in direct response to Whole Foods destroying its high end customer base

not the other way around.

Whole Foods was founded in Austin at the current location of Cheapo disks in 1980, and had been in Austin for almost two decades before the execs at HEB decided they would try to get in on the high margin organic and high end grocery, opening the store @ 45th street and Lamar, about ten years ago.

I don't get how you can possibly say that Whole Foods was copying Central Market, when it is so clearly the other way around. Every time I saw a new feature at a Central Market, it was in response to something being offered at a Whole Foods.

I agree the downtown store is hectic, but the Arbor store is still the same. The downtown store is hectic because it is the headquarters store and the execs use it to test out new ideas, so the place looks like a Middle Eastern bazaar.

[Dover]

5. Do you work for WF?

Just curious, because of the authority with which you explain 'the history' of that store and your apparent loyalty to it.

I am not connected to either store or the food industry. Just my perception of how things unfolded.
I shopped regularly at the old WF downtown location so am familiar with it's style, etc. And yes, they created the high end organic base in Austin as well as ready-to-eat wholesome foods. But when Central Market opened its doors it WAS a whole new experience in shopping and while it had high end organic products, that was not it's 'contract' with its customers as it had been with WF. They simply had high end food of all varieties and a bazaar-like atmosphere and design. It was all the buzz and people flocked to it. So my observation was that HEB had done something very innovative (albeit, for the high end shopper).
To my knowledge, WF hadn't done anything like it, though I do think they created the environment that allowed Central Market to prosper. Then Central Market opened another successful market just south of the old downtown WF. So WF was now flanked on both sides and I feel certain they were feeling the pinch. So it 'seemed' their response was to build the huge current downtown WF which also 'seemed' to borrow many of the things that Central Market had done and in the process, 'seem' to have abandoned the very thing that at one time had been their signature and contract with their customers (as explained in the above article).

Now what was going on inside the business world of the two stores, and their motivations for their decisions is unknown to me. HEB is, to my knowledge, family owned and limited to Texas. WF has much more expansive ambitions and is beholding to shareholders. I'm speaking as a long time resident and customer of both stores, and my perception of how things unfolded. Perhaps it's fair to say both stores were competing with one another and both 'grew' from the experience, borrowing from one another.

But my point about the sidelining of serious organic shoppers is the sad lament of this story.

[youngdem]

6. No. Don't work for em.

Just lived near 45th @ Lamar forever.

[Dover]

7. So your neighborhood was strongly impacted by Central Market.

Is that what you're saying? Or are you just saying that you've lived and shopped with WF for a long time and have also followed the changes?

BTW I still shop at the smaller WF as well as at Central Market. But I'm starting to wander over to Wheatsville Coop more frequently now.

[youngdem]

9. Neighborhood traffic was NUKED by the shopping center.

Went from quaint to crazy instantly. Sucked. Why we moved.

Also, as an Austin resident, you just kinda knew about WF because it was the boom story at the time, and Central Market was the corporate copycat coming in to retake their high end clients they lost to quality.

Wheatsville is great, but I used to get so frustrated by the prices, lack of regular produce, and hygiene issues occasionally encountered in the deli section. (I love me some hippies, but fellas please bathe every so often if you are making the food...Yuck) Still the best vegan chili on the planet.

[jedr]

4. Organic foods is a limited market;

Whole Foods is on the cutting edge of food marketing ( The store in Fair Fax Va. being testimony) and if they choose to expand their markets ;upscale foods were the "natural" choice. I'm sure this will not please everyone, but a store with 5 restaurants , 1,000+ cheeses, and a large wine selection with an excellent organics foods store all in one makes my day!

[Dover]

8. Not suggesting that there isn't a market for such a vast market complex

but I am saying that WF abandoned and perhaps are destroying true organic farming in favor of large suppliers. WF has actively been involved in lobbying for legislation to do just that and therefore ARE traitors to their own original cause.

Organics must, by nature, remain small. So yes, it IS a limited market even as demand for organincs rises.
WF's answer is to diminish the legal definition of 'organic' to suit it's ambitions.
I, and others are saying what is needed, in response, is a resurgence of small, locally grown organic markets that adhere to strict conditions, self-imposed if not legally sanctioned. Perhaps they'll have to invent their own labeling system as the FDA and the big food industries undermine the organic definition.

[jedr]

10. late post , hope you get it;

Whole Foods argument aside; Substantial farming seems to be addressing some of these issues. Small scale farming , direct marketed in a 50 mi radius . Unfortunately big box has taken over everything and the ma and pa organic food store has a hard time of it. I too share the disappointment of that loss.

[Dover]

12. Where there is a will there's a way. If people are concerned about

eating wholesome food that demand WILL be met somehow.

I like the fun and color and variety that stores like WF have brought to grocery shopping and eating. I just wish they'd drop organics rather than fiddle with the organic definition/labeling to serve their own selfish purposes. There is some evidence that the organic craze has affected the way food is grown and processed for the positive, but it's also being undermined in terms of regulatory issues to meet demand and is pushing out the truly organic small farmer. Maybe organics are TOO successful.

One serious national food contamination emergency could quickly change the picture (like the pet food scare), as well as a plunging economy that can no longer support 'high end' anything.

[blitzen]

11. WF is the only store that makes Baton Rouge tolerable, from a culinary...

standpoint. I'm not a natural or organic foods guy, but I like to cook--and thank god that we have a mega Whole Foods.