19 ms·

Whole Foods is struggling

191 points by DiabloD3 10y ago

tedmiston 10y ago
> Apart from shuttering stores and stalling expansion plans, the company is continuing to focus on 365 by Whole Foods, a two-year-old division aimed at launching stores for “value-conscious” consumers. Without a doubt, generic organics is where we are going. I don't often shop at Whole Foods because I can't get my whole list there for a reasonable price compared to buying mostly a mix of organic and Simple Truth at Kroger. It's not worth making a separate trip just for a few things. If WF zoned in on this space more that could change things.
Animats 10y ago
Basic problem: "Organic" food production costs are not that much higher than "inorganic" (?) food.[1] Maybe 10-20%. But the retail markups average 85%. As organic farming has become larger and more efficient, Whole Foods' competitors have cut prices, killing Whole Foods' margins. Whole Foods relies on high-margin items. The checkout areas are stuffed with homeopathic remedies, which are overpriced water. Now that's a markup. [1] https://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/download.php?id=419 https://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/download.php?id=419
- the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
  The link does not load for me but I doubt those numbers. Where I live (Austria) organic farming is significantly more expensive primarily because it requires more human labor. I suspect that depends on how tou regulate organic vs non organic food however.
  - phillc73 10y ago
    I would be interested in some examples of the labour discrepancy. When I think of the difference attributable to organic farming it is mainly around lower crop yields.
  - gajomi 10y ago
    I would be curious to hear a bit more about this. From my recollection, just about every single piece of vegetable matter in any given Viennese Billa would come from outside Austria (potatoes being the exception). Is there US style industrial agriculture in Austria (I'm afraid I never ventured out of Wien and surrounding Niederosterreich area)?
    - bosie 10y ago
      That depends on the season though, in summer almost everything seems to come from austrian farms. we don't have us style industrial agriculture in austria. our fields are tiny compared to the US (avg farm size is 40 acres; and we really don't have those superfarms [2000+ acres] that seem to be common in the US). same goes for livestock, a farmer doesn't have anywhere near the same number of say kettle on his/her farm.
      - Thlom 10y ago
        I drove through some farmlands in California on vacation a few years ago, and the magnitude is astonishing. Never seen anything close in Europe.
        tracker1 10y ago
        Driving between SF and Portland on the I-5 is definitely some impressive sights in terms of farm land.
    - phillc73 10y ago
      I don't really know a great deal about farming in Austria, but as the other poster pointed out, there isn't really industrial agriculture US style that I am aware of. However, a couple of examples: - Austria has a pretty decent wine industry, with vineyard clusters in numerous locations around the country; south east Styria, Krems/Wachau, Burgenland, just south of Vienna. - In Styria, there's plenty of pumpkin growing, which are mostly used to make pumpkin oil, which is an outstanding salad dressing. - Also in Styria, there is a pretty big apple growing industry around Gleisdorf/Weiz to the east of Graz. - There are some reasonably big cropping operations in the east of the country in Burgenland where the landscape is more rolling hills than high alps.
  - jonasvp 10y ago
    I suspect the American interpretation of "organic" is much less strict than the European one. Also, there would probably be much less regulation and control of the production process because free market.
- DodgyEggplant 10y ago
  From a personal friend who is an organic farmer: (a) organic food is hard to do in large fields, since the plants can easily catch anything, and the farmer looses the entire crop.It happens much more than non organic. So the farmer must use very small portions of fields, each with different type of plant, and thus minimise the risk. So no economy of scale (b) you can't use the same plants again and again on the same field, and the cycle of changing plants each time requires to build, dismantle and rebuild another infrastructure each time (c) can't keep in refrigerators long time, so what is not sold quickly, is lost
  - Fej 10y ago
    I thought crop rotation was good for the soil?
    - Filligree 10y ago
      It is. The farmer's complaint is that they have to do it.
    - shagie 10y ago
      It is. But there's also the "how large is the rotation?" There's the typical cash crop rotation: corn to soy. This has the advantage of cash crop and cash crop. These are both well known and the differences in weather over the course of a growing season are minimized - if its a drought year, you've got the appropriate hybrid. If its a wet year, you've got the appropriate hybrid. Very predictable. Adding wheat into the rotation helps. http://www.cornandsoybeandigest.com/make-wheat-work http://www.cornandsoybeandigest.com/make-wheat-work http://www.agriculture.com/crops/wheat/adding-wheat-to-cnsoybe-rotations-helps_144-ar46231 http://www.agriculture.com/crops/wheat/adding-wheat-to-cnsoy... - but then this also means different equipment to harvest and a different market. When one goes to the idealistic organic the cycle could be: corn, beans, reddish, onion, melon, sunflower, broccoli, carrots, tomatoes. Rather extreme, but an example. Also note that onions and garlic can be mixed, as can peans and beans... but that is the idea. This works nicely for the home garden plots but when trying to rotate with hundreds of acres of fields its a bit more challenging. Instead of two or three means of harvest its nine different types of plants - tomato harvest is completely unlike corn harvest. Furthermore, it means that the farmer is a bit more at the mercy of the weather (great year for corn, but you've planted radishes because you just had corn two years ago and would need some pesticides or go to a GMO variety of corn... and that's not organic anymore) and the markets (there's no demand for the things that are in the next three seasons in the harvest - do you skip forward four?).
Aloha 10y ago
One of my friends nicknamed Whole Foods as "Whole Paycheck" - its apt. I was absolutely aghast at the prices at whole foods the first time I went in. 6 dollars for a gallon of milk, for example. I love the selection of Whole Foods - I don't like the price however enough to shop there. When I need something you'd typically find at the "organic" food store, I'm much more likely to go find a local co-op type place, which while not much cheaper, leaves me feeling a little better about myself when I'm done shopping.
- pfranz 10y ago
  It might be where I live, but the sticker shock of Whole Foods just seemed like a veneer for me (things I don't buy)--although, it's probably just how I shop. The big thing I noticed was the natural, but not organic items were way cheaper at Whole Foods than the grocery store. Things like cage-free eggs, basic peanut butter (just peanuts and salt), or almond milk. The organic things, prepared food, soaps and stuff were all ludicrously priced. Co-ops, farmers market, or a place like Trader Joes is still cheaper, but not always available. But I'm probably not the kind of person driving up their profits.
- bosie 10y ago
  I have never been to the US but is 6 dollars for a gallon of organic milk considered a lot? What do you normally pay for it?
  - vidoc 10y ago
    That would be cheap for a gallon!
    - ZephyrP 10y ago
      In San Francisco at Foods Co (Folsom & 14th), a gallon of milk is presently $2.49.
      - vidoc 10y ago
        But it's not organic is it? I'm sure across the street at Rainbow Market the gal will be organic and much much more than $6, but hey I dislike milk so it's just a rough guess :P Besides, I've always been impressed by the symbolic beauty of the proximity of both stores, you couldn't get a better metaphor of how the city is changing.
godzillabrennus 10y ago
Competition has lowered the prices on the same goods and its killing their business model. Time for them to lower prices, increase automation to cut labor costs and end employee benefits to be as competitive. Except of course they can't because politically their customers want to feel good about shopping there. That would vanish if the employees benefited less.
jsz0 10y ago
Whole Food's prices went way past absurd. I can't afford too shop there anymore unless I'm very careful about what I buy. Almost every single item is 40-50% more expensive. When I first started shopping there I feel like it was closer to 15-20% more expensive which was acceptable. I don't care if $2.50 poor people grocery store PopTarts kill me 15 minutes sooner than the Whole Foods bullshit whatever alternative. That's just fine. I'll give up my 15 minutes to save all that money.
- jimmywanger 10y ago
  > Almost every single item is 40-50% more expensive. This study begs to differ, and it was done 8 months ago. Regular produce is about 20% more expensive, and meat is 50% more expensive, as it turns out. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-more-expensive-is-whole-foods-2016-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-more-expensive-is-wh... > I don't care if $2.50 poor people grocery store PopTarts kill me 15 minutes sooner than the Whole Foods bullshit whatever alternative. The "Whole Foods bullshit whatever alternative" is making your own toast with jam, which is orders of magnitude less expensive. If you're really concerned about food budgets, processed foods are the worst possible thing you can buy.
  - sokoloff 10y ago
    I find the meat quality at Whole Foods to be quite good. We do most of our shopping at Star Market (a mid-range "normal" supermarket) and the meat there is OK, but if we're making a meal where meat is the feature, we're pretty likely to make a special trip to WFM to get the steaks.
    - luck_fenovo 10y ago
      Do you have a local butcher? Whole Foods has nice meat, but I've always gotten better from a butcher shop (though I generally only go there when, as you said, the meat is the feature of the meal).
      - sokoloff 10y ago
kobeya 10y ago
Well, why should I shop at Whole Foods when I can go to Sprouts (or some other alternative) and get basically the same thing for almost regular/non-organic prices? Then again, the fine article says Sprouts et al are also hurting...
- wanderr 10y ago
  I was surprised it said Sprouts was also in trouble, the one near us seems to get lots of business and we go there every week as well, for produce sometimes their organic stuff is even cheaper than Safeway's conventional produce so it's a no-brainer. IMO the only way Sprouts could improve is being bigger, still end up having to go to Safeway for lots of stuff Sprouts doesn't carry...but Whole Foods isn't even in the equation for us.
- glitcher 10y ago
  Definitely agree with this. Add to it that Trader Joe's has a nice variety of prepared foods on their own brand that are also substantially less expensive than WF. It's a very telling sign where I live that the WF are primarily only in the most upscale neighborhoods, while Sprouts locations are much more accessible (and they always seem to be busy).
- adventured 10y ago
  It appears Sprouts is suffering margin compression more than a sales hit. They're generating about the same net income as they did in fiscal 2014, but their sales are roughly 30% higher. If one believes in their long-term trajectory, the stock is 50% off from the IPO in 2013.
  - someguydave 10y ago
    That's a shame, Sprouts is my family's primary grocery store.
london888 10y ago
Isn't one reason organic costs more that customers will pay more for it?
- grigjd3 10y ago
  Yes. Also, see prices for "artisinal" cheeses.
yuhong 10y ago
OT, but Whole Foods Code Of Business Conduct at http://s21.q4cdn.com/118642233/files/doc_downloads/governance_documents/CodeofBusinessConduct-Dec-7-2016.pdf http://s21.q4cdn.com/118642233/files/doc_downloads/governanc... still have the approval requirements for postings.
ianai 10y ago
It's not just about organic food. These sorts of stores cater to niches that the larger chains do not.
- vidoc 10y ago
  Exactly, and they also maintain a higher image of Quality/Luxury by not carrying a lot of products you'd find in most normal stores likes Safeway or similar (1). 1: Those stores that have carts that you can actually use to shop without being a CEO.
yourapostasy 10y ago
Most if not all WFM stores hold tours for customers to teach how to affordably shop WFM. Ask about it. The TL;DR is only buy fresh vegetables, single-item bulks, fruit, meats, and seafood in descending order of volume/mass. The less processing and packaging, the better as a rule of thumb. Round out very sparingly with exceptions. This is how we should shop regardless of store. Mackey has publicly admitted he vastly regrets taking WFM to Wall Street. I get the impression if most customers shopped as described above, crushing profit margins, in the absence of shareholder pressure to change WFM's real mission and cost him strategic control, and the profits are self-sustained, he wouldn't mind. I'd like to see more feedback from others on whether or not they noticed WFM's efforts to broaden beyond just an organic label. They did try, and to a smaller extent are still trying (meat stages are a prominent example), and are trying not to antagonize regulatory stakeholders by pointing out the mainstream organic label is deficient in many ways, but by and large it seems most of their customer base is more concerned about labels than actually delivering change.
- RyanZAG 10y ago
  If you think of it as a 'guilt tax' it makes a lot more sense, and also the direction these stores need to go to improve profits. It's never really been about the food itself: it's been about selling a positive self image. It's a reaction to the abundance of media showing modern chicken coops and mass migrant vegetable labour. Once you understand that, you understand why the label is the single most important thing, and the less real details supplied the better. Any details you supply serves to break the facade that the organic label means you're doing good deeds - because ultimately, you're still killing that chicken. It's why "efforts to broaden beyond just an organic label" are doomed before they begin and will hurt sales more than they help.
  - CuriouslyC 10y ago
    What's wrong with killing a chicken? Eating and being eaten is part of the natural order. Creating massive suffering is the aberration.
    - 10y ago
Swizec 10y ago
> Cummins pointed out that some of the most successful, most mainstream organic products don’t meet his organization’s strict definition of what organic should be. Those include the ubiquitous Earthbound Farms, which grows its lettuces in monocultures, and Aurora Organic Dairy, which has been criticized for running its operation like an industrial factory farm. What is the point of "organic" if we don't even agree on what it means? Perhaps some sort of governing agency should give it a strict legal definition. But that's probably in nobody's business interest ...
- krrrh 10y ago
  The USDA does define a legal definition of "organic". When they started doing this in the 90s it was very controversial in the health food community, because up until then there were various private certifications. The worry was that the USDA definition was a lowest common denominator and customers would not recognize the value in the more strict private certifications.
  - torgoguys 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure that prior to the USDA stepping in, "organic" had no regulatory definition and could be used pretty willy-nilly. Now it has a definition, but I guess I am a contrarian. I find the organic industry to be pretty much a scam. It promised healthier, better tasting food. You can find studies showing that, but if you look at the totality of the literature, you find out that it isn't inherently either of those things. It is basically the naturalistic fallacy applied to the food industry on a wide-scale.
    - jMyles 10y ago
      > but if you look at the totality of the literature, you find out that it isn't inherently either of those things I haven't actually looked at the available lit in a year or so, but if this is true, it's a huge change from the last time I did. My understanding is that several very good, large studies had shown dramatic differences in organic vs orthodox food.
spike021 10y ago
Whole Foods is pretty awful when it comes to pricing. Sure they can up-charge for convenience, but when I'm out and about and want something like sliced up mango spears, why should I be paying 10+ dollars for 1.5 or 2 mangos sliced up? I could just get a couple for maybe 2 bucks at a regular grocery store and just carry a knife with me to do it myself at that point.
- noodle 10y ago
  You can apply that argument to basically any convenience or luxury. The answer being, some want mangos and value their time and effort more than the the difference in mango price and sliced mango price.
  - spike021 10y ago
    But in some circumstances it's not necessarily that the consumer is trying to cut time and effort. For instance, if I'm out and about doing stuff and happen to want some sliced mango. It's not that I decided in advance not to buy bulk mangoes and slice them at home, I just decided spur of the moment to get some. Of course there are people who don't like slicing mangoes themselves, so for added convenience they will buy pre-sliced mangoes and bring them home or wherever specifically to eat them.
    - noodle 10y ago
      > But in some circumstances it's not necessarily that the consumer is trying to cut time and effort. > I just decided spur of the moment to get some. No, that's still cutting time and effort. Okay you want something spur of the moment. Your option is to buy it and then go home and slice it, buy it pre-sliced, or don't buy it at all. That is still a choice of convenience vs payment. You're not being forced to buy the mango.
WalterBright 10y ago
I don't shop at WF because the parking lot is too small, always full, and there's just no place to park anywhere near it.
- vidoc 10y ago
  > I don't shop at WF because the parking lot is too small, always full, and there's just no place to park anywhere near it. Classic! I wish people in my hood were like you and bailed out instead of lining up and blocking the traffic to enter their parking lot, totally pisses me off!
- massysett 10y ago
  Same here. Used to live somewhat close to a Whole Foods in DC. It had a small parking lot that filled in peak hours, and there was no other place to park even if I paid. Of course the lot was half filled with cab drivers buying $10 worth of food, thus pushing out customers willing to fill a $200 cart. The full lot and tiny carts showed this store was not set up for someone buying a lot of food. I stopped going.
DiabloD3 10y ago
So, where I live, we don't have things like Whole Foods and Sprouts. We have a tiny little specialty store in town that carries a very small amount of interesting, but expensive, organic and whatnot brands (but almost invariably, not what I'm looking for, but they're always willing to order it and sell it to me for far more than I can just order online for).... I've seen people both worship and shit on Whole Foods, have seen Sprouts described as a "Whole Foods that didn't sell its soul to Wall Street", and I've heard Trader Joes described as "half a grocery store, so you can't do all your shopping there, but its the half you want". We have two national chains in town with big stores, a couple smaller quasi-chains (IGA, etc), and a Super Walmart, so its not like its some out of the place hole in the wall.... So, what's the draw of Whole Foods (and by extension, Sprouts and the other clones)?
- divbit 10y ago
  The draw imo is the following: you try to find e.g. a tortilla at 'average big chain supermarket' without any hydrogenated oils, and it's going to take 20 minutes of reading ingredients, and even then maybe there just aren't any. At Trader Joe- the standard tortilla (i.e. the trader joe brand tortilla) is made of basically the same ingredients you would use if you made it at home, and the price is reasonable. Whole foods is like a version of that, but rather than having everything be 'whole foods' brand, it's a bunch of fancy hipster brands. Sprouts is like that but with a very large selection of fruits and vegetables of usually higher quality than you can find at your standard grocery.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    Even Wal-Mart sells tortillas with a bare minimum of ingredients these days and they are dirt cheap. I can't find them listed online. Not sure if it's due to ethnic tastes around here or what, but they are definitely there, and they are very good.
    - matwood 10y ago
      I know people hate on WM for all sorts of reasons, but if it's a packaged product they are hard to beat on price. I would not eat any of the 'fresh' things from WM though.
Raed667 10y ago
I don't understand why organic food is this expensive in the US in places like WFM. In France for example 'bio' tagged food is getting cheaper everyday, some products are sometimes even cheaper than their counter-part.
- mcguire 10y ago
  I doubt that organic food is "expensive", except in comparison; 'non-organic' is very cheap. Industrial agriculture works very well, with some quality tradeoffs.
- vidoc 10y ago
  > I don't understand why organic food is this expensive in the US in places like WFM. I have been wondering about this myself, products labeled 'organic' have varying degrees of quality that I assume are reflected in distributor price. Now, while in my experience WF tends to mostly have higher quality organic stuff on their shelves than my other go-to stores, my intuition is that their markup is pretty important. When I think about it, it seems apparent that WF and similar stores simply have a strategy of luxury: the higher prices are a statement, in addition to improving the perceived value of the products to the buyer, they also secure a relative exclusivity. In other words, they've gone a little bit apple-store of food.
- briandear 10y ago
  Using France as an example, a liter of organic milk at my local Super U is about €0.50 more expensive than the equivalent non-organic -- this is comparing the Super U store brand -- which should eliminate "branding" markup from the equation.
  - vidoc 10y ago
    What's funny is that the price difference between both countries is almost anecdotal in the case of milk. You would probably have a heart attack if you saw the price of cheese, and not only imported cheese, domestic 'artisanal' cheese too. The prices are just borderline grotesque, they are so extreme that they basically sell cheese pre-cut, in tiny tiny quantities. Most consumers ignore the fact that different kinds of cheeses should be cut a certain way for actual reasons and not out of sheer snobbism, consequently they sell them the pointe and the talon at the same price, lol! Can't resist: the other day we made a 3 cheese fondue for four and it costed us close to a benjamin just in cheese at WF!
rodionos 10y ago
I've been their loyal customer to the extent that I would try to book hotels not too far from one of their stores when going on extended business trips, say 1 week+. Because I tend to shop for the same items I also noticed that prices have gone up substantially, sometimes 3-4 times over the last 10 years, e.g. specialty teas. This is contrary to what's discussed in the article (prices falling).
- icantdrive55 10y ago
  In my store, they did lower the price of milk, eggs, flour, sugar, potatoes, and their house brand of cheeses. They really did try to lower the prices of some, some of the basics. They do have a lost liter wine for $2.49 a bottle. They hide it. Forget the name. I despised Whole Foods for years. It was just like throwing away money. My father couldn't even pass the stores--he would take a side road just to avoid the parking lot, even when he had a tumor in his liver. My dad didn't understand high prices, or throwing away money. Anyways, a relative whom is too old to drive, had me take her there. She bought all the expensive items because she could. I didn't buy anything, until a few years ago; they really did lower the prices on certain foods. (If anyone from corporate happens to read this--get rid of uniformed security. Hire undercover on the stores with high customer theft. For what you charge, I don't want to see security guards. While I'm at it get rid of the time clock sensors the Janitors scan. The job is degrading enough, you don't need to micromanage them. If I'm paying extra; treat all employees well. Yea, I do notice.)
  - _JamesA_ 10y ago
    > While I'm at it get rid of the time clock sensors the Janitors scan. The job is degrading enough, you don't need to micromanage them. If I'm paying extra; treat all employees well. Yea, I do notice.) Those 'clock sensors' aka sweep logs [1] are for legal purposes. Slip and fall claims are a major liability in the grocery industry. [1]: http://www.blanelaw.com/blog/sweep-logs-establishing-notice-of-a-store-owner-on-a-ca-slip-fall-case.cfm http://www.blanelaw.com/blog/sweep-logs-establishing-notice-...
narrator 10y ago
Organic food is vastly more popular now and thus Whole foods had more competition from the likes of Walmart and Costco in the organic produce space. This has driven margins down and that has cut into their profit margins.
Eerie 10y ago
Kill your food before eating, then it won't struggle.
anu7df 10y ago
I don't really see why the whole foods hate is so hip. I shop there routinely and buy mostly the non packaged stuff. Organic vegetables and fruits are cheaper than in most chains and I really have not found any other place where I can get grass fed (tasty), pasteurized (convenient), non homogenized (yes it makes a difference. In taste and texture and arguably healthier) milk. Of course I do not buy the silly precut fruits and stuff. But if someone finds it convenient and doesn't mind spending the money I don't care. But in the end I shop there because most stuff there is made from good simple ingredients and I don't have to spend a long time reading ingredient lists especially the ones that changes often
- hijinks 10y ago
  I tend to agree that the fresh fruits and veggies are pretty much the same price as competitors (really only experience is Safeway) What I do find as a plus is Whole Foods tends to get more stuff locally if they can and a store like Safeway is going more regional or to Mexico to keep its costs down. I'll pay a little more to have my fresh food being sourced locally and more time to ripen on the vine then ripen in a truck.
- matwood 10y ago
  > Organic vegetables and fruits are cheaper than in most chains I recently discovered the above, and after paying attention there are many items that are less expensive at WF. The whole fresh fruits and vegetables are the same price or cheaper than other local chains, and are also very high quality. The only place that beats them on price is Walmart, but quality is hit and miss (normally miss). I have found beer and wine to be $1-$2 cheaper at WF than local chains. Not everything of course, but I tend to keep the same wine and beer around the house so I notice pricing. Good cheese can also be had for less money at WF. The WF brand whole bean coffee is also cheaper than anything else I have found locally. If frugality is the goal I have found that for most packaged stuff Walmart is the way to go. Then WF for fruits and veggies, and finally Harris Teeter (local chain in the south) for meats (never ending special boneless/skinless chicken breasts are always $1.99/lb).
  - angry-hacker 10y ago
patsplat 10y ago
I stopped going to whole foods after getting food poisoning from a lunch buffet plate that cost $18. They overcharge, and don't deliver the quality to justify the markup. http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/addressing-grocery-weight-and-pricing http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/addressing-grocery-weig... > "As has been reported in the media, our New York City stores were audited by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) for weights-and-measures errors, such as those that cause improper price labeling on some of the products that are produced, packaged and labeled in our stores."
Spooky23 10y ago
The bullshit parts about Whole Foods were bullshit a decade ago. The difference is that their quality has declined and others are catching up. The food bar was near restaurant quality in 2006, now it's slop at 3x the cost. You also have to be careful about date labels, my local store will relabel old inventory and add a few weeks to the sell by dare. Also, Amazon impacts them harder because WF lost their monopoly on weird organic product. It's the typical big company story. They grew too fast. I'm sure the supply chain is a shitshow.
- rickdale 10y ago
  my local store will relabel old inventory and add a few weeks to the sell by dare Can you elaborate on this? I totally agree with your other point that others are catching up and I think they realized they don't need to have an entire organic store just certain key items(grass fed beef, good produce to make everyone happy.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    Perfect example: they sampled jalapeño Brie with some fancy cracker and fig jam. I was shopping for a Christmas party and bought two of each. We used one for the party. It was dated with a 2/28/17 sell by date. The little cheese wheel was wrapped in plastic. Unwrap it, as I did last week, and lo and behold, the date sticker under the plastic wrap says 12/21/16. They play similar games with cut fruit and other stuff. I can get same or better stuff at Hannaford for 1/3 the cost.
- vidoc 10y ago
  > The bullshit parts about Whole Foods were bullshit a decade ago. What you say is very interesting as I have often heard people tell me how much better the quality of their products was when they 'started'. As I have precisely only lived in the US for a decade, I'd be very curious to know how the evolution of quality for regular stores such as Safeway, or other supermarkets of similar standing where people with working class wages can fill a whole cart. I sort of have the intuition that there must have been sort of a shift in the past 20 years, possibly when the GMOs were imposed to Americans, where Excellent food became Regular and Regular food became Substandard. Now I realize I might just be somewhere close to entirely wrong right there :P
tptacek 10y ago
* Whole Foods produce is bad. We get better produce at our local major grocery chain, and much better at the Mexican grocery. * Whole Foods bet big on prepared food; about 1/4 of our local Whole Foods is essentially a food court. * Whole Foods has a sort of Trader Joe's phenomenon where the place is gradually filling up with house brand stuff. But unlike TJ's, WF's house brands aren't relabeled good outside brands; they're mostly pretty bad, and WF tends to carry them to the exclusion of any other product, so I can get 5 different kinds of chicken stock at a big chain grocer and just WF's house brand at WF. Things Whole Foods in Chicagoland is better at than other grocers: * Meat. * Seasonal vegetables; no other grocer is going to carry ramps this May. * Cheese. * A decent house-brand olive oil. I think that's it.
- matwood 10y ago
  > Whole Foods bet big on prepared food; about 1/4 of our local Whole Foods is essentially a food court. I think this is also what led everyone to feel/think that WF is 100% more expensive than anywhere else. After trying the food court awhile back, and paying what was essentially $20 for a tiny box of food, it took me years to try WF again.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    It seems that all the "high-quality" stores in my area do the food court as well. Sometimes it's nice, and I get a salad for lunch there a few times a year, but it's always somewhat overpriced. I think there is a subpopulation of wealthy people who never cook, that these grocers are chasing. It's understandable that if WF were the only store in the area serving those customers, it would do well. Now that lots of stores have a food court, it's probably not as lucrative for them.
    - robotjosh 10y ago
      Its a golden corral except your plate costs 2-3x as much and you don't get seconds.
    - alexhutcheson 10y ago
rojobuffalo 10y ago
Have any of you guys looked into CSAs? It's basically a seasonal subscription to products from individual local farms.
- gregd 10y ago
  We've done numerous CSAs, even a bean CSA. The issue that we had with most CSAs is that we didn't have choices in what vegetables we got. There were just some vegetables in our house, that no matter how you cooked them, they just wouldn't get eaten. On the plus side though, you're exposed to a wide variety of stuff to choose from and it can be a great way to get more veggies in your life and support your local farmers.
  - rojobuffalo 10y ago
    Were the recipes not that good or was it more a lack of motivation to prepare and eat all those vegetables? Would it make a difference if you knew which varieties were coming ahead of time or is it more just a function of having choice?
    - gregd 10y ago
      It wasn't the recipes, my wife is an awesome cook. The lack of choice was just irritating. There are only so many ways you can use garlic whistles.
      - rojobuffalo 10y ago
        They're pretty good for pickling and flame-grilling. I get your point though. I'm actually hacking on an idea I had 2 days ago that I think might address this issue of choice with CSA distributions.
        gregd 10y ago
        I would be extremely interested in seeing what you come up with. Will it be on terra.farm?
philip1209 10y ago
I'm surprised that the 365 concept does not have an in-house butcher. I think it strongly strongly correlates with the quality of meat. I've seen many friends go to Whole Foods just for fresh meat, then Trader Joes for everything else.
robotjosh 10y ago
I used to shop only at whole foods, happily paying $200 for 3 paper bags of groceries. Then in 2009 their CEO spouted some libertarian crap how he was against healthcare reform. I was shocked that whole foods wasn't run by hippies. At that point I did some research and found that the 365 store brand that claims to be organic actually just buys ingredients from china that china claims is organic. Who is verifying it is genuinely organic, the crazy libertarian CEO? I doubt it!
peter303 10y ago
Our local Krogers has taken Whole Foods and Trader Joes head on offering a broad line of oganic, vegetarian and vegan items. I'll go there for the price and basics, then to TJ for variety.
dota_fanatic 10y ago
This is aside from the organic thing, but probably plays a part. I've had two friends work there for over a year, one in the 90s and one in the past couple of years, and in both cases, management was just grinding through employees. The recent run ended when they cut employees and expanded duties for the remaining folks (two or more jobs now in one), with no increase in pay and no increase in technology at hand to justify the ability of one person doing what used to take two in full-time shifts. Yeahhh he quit soon after that. I tended to avoid WF in favor of Trader Joe's, Sprouts, Natural Grocers, and straight from farmers, but after hearing how they treat their employees, again, that's just one more reason not to give them business...
tsunamifury 10y ago
Whole Foods just opened a new store in North Berkeley that no one wanted, and was in the midst of four! other natural grocery stores. They then had the gall to offer almost entirely their 365 brand of subpar products, compared to the very premium offers of their counterparts in the area. They are somewhat busy, but never packed, as locals all prefer the far better offerings at neighborhood locations. As soon as they opened that store I realized someone at HQ was either clueless or arrogantly thought theyd just move in and dominate. Looks like they are getting their just desserts.
- mrits 10y ago
  They don't have to initially dominate. They just have to outlast the other stores.
- 467568985476 10y ago
  According the the article, their decline is actually for the opposite reason. Big-box mainstream grocery stores are now selling similar products, and customers are going there rather than Whole Foods or smaller organic food stores.
headShrinker 10y ago
My perspective is maybe a little different from the rest of the country's. In NYC all of the stores are really expensive and quality control is pretty bad. Produce and product choices are limited and quality is absolutely terrible. Whole Foods is actually one of the less expensive grocery stores. The quality is easily the best in the neighborhood. The employees are noticeably nicer, and I can pay with my phone. They do have some local suppliers, which Gristedies doesn't. Lastly, and probably least important to everyone but it's a pet-peeve of mine, the ice cream hasn't thawed and frozen in to a brick (a common side-effect of living on an island, frozen things get melted).
- untilHellbanned 10y ago
  Ye ole anecdote to the rescue. Ignoring the point of the article.
- galdosdi 10y ago
  Gristedes is a joke. Not sure why that's your go-to comparison. Have you tried some more affordable "normal" supermarkets like Key Foods, C Town, Western Beef, etc? You might still complain about quality (don't know your standards), but you won't be complaining about price at least any more. Trader Joe's is also fantastic (good quality, good deals on anything-but-produce, get that from C Town instead), if you can bear the lines (the wait time is not as bad as it looks) or just come in at an off-peak time.
  - guiseroom 10y ago
    Trader Joe's has terrible produce and meat with a short shelf life. Too many times I've bought rice and boxed pasta that contain dead bugs that float to the top when boiling.
    - r00fus 10y ago
      As long as we're sharing anecdata, in my experience TJs has decent quality control... but it depends a bit store to store.
    - 10y ago
conorcleary 10y ago
South Park? :)
appleiigs 10y ago
Whole Foods is struggling... ok, that was the easy part. Now what can they do about it? Most comments here are about their price. They can't race to the bottom. If you were running the business, what would you do?
- tracker1 10y ago
  Improve customer service in general, bring the food court options back to the quality they apparently used to be at. People will pay uprate prices for quality and service. WF has been slipping in these areas and that doesn't match the value for the pricing. Also, they expanded well beyond what is supported based on their pricing demographic.
anu7df 10y ago
Lot of the comments talk about co-op as an alternative to whole foods. I live in Houston Texas. Other than " There in lies the problem" can some suggest a reasonable alternative for getting some good organic vegetables and fruits. The farmers markets are usually honey, eggs and beef stalls. The co-ops I have found usually are higher price per pound than whole foods. Traders Joe here has limited selection of everything. HEB is OK but not many organic choices for milk and meat. I understand this has nothing to do with the article. Are there any good options for people in biggish cities away from southern California. Gosh I miss those farmers markets..
- tracker1 10y ago
  I tend to just shop at the different stores mostly depending on the main thing I'm going for... one day may be mostly produce at sprouts.. another meat at Basha's... another general groceries at Fry's... another mostly frozen/boxed at WM superstore. I try to keep a few things on hand at all times, and will shop at different stores for mainly the thing they are best at with differing times/days. I tend not to shop at multiple places on the same day, I just don't care for shopping that much. If you have a good spot for your preferred milk/meat, just get that there, get other stuff elsewhere. There's nothing that says you have to buy everything on the same day/trip.
- ConroyBumpus 10y ago
  The HEB Central Market on Westheimer might have more of what you're looking for insofar as Organic meat.
Overtonwindow 10y ago
A plastic bottle of water with a single asparagus in it labeled "asparagus water" for $4.99. That's why Whole Foods is struggling. People are sick of being screwed with by a corporation.
- majewsky 10y ago
  How is that "being screwed"? It's not like you're being forced to buy this particular item.
MengerSponge 10y ago
Does nobody care about their institutional dishonesty? Defrauding customers is good for short-term profits, but it might cause long-term issues. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/foods-accused-overcharging-exaggerating-weight-packaged-foods-officials/story?id=32002573 http://abcnews.go.com/Business/foods-accused-overcharging-ex...
- gumby 10y ago
  This seems to be part of the original company culture. Even back WF had only two stores, the original downtown and the one on mo pac (mid 1980s) they got in trouble with the attorney general for labeling conventional stuff as organic and marking it up.
socrates1998 10y ago
I don't really shop there anymore other than the occasional thing that only they have that I really want. I am in South Florida and it's the most expensive grocery store by far, like 20-30% it feels like for almost the same items. This is subjective for sure. Publix Greenwise stores and brand has done a really good job of giving me what I want for a lot cheaper. Now, I feel like Whole foods has better quality, but it's just not worth the almost ~30% premium I feel like I pay when I shop there. Also, Trader Joe's just opened up here and that place is so much better. Really, I don't want to pay that huge ass premium.
ravenstine 10y ago
I stopped shopping there because the quality of both their produce and their salad bar food plummeted a year ago. Their fruit isn't as fresh as it used to be, and they now serve the same cheap slop at their salad/hot bar. There isn't much variety anymore, either. These things are true of any Whole Foods in SoCal I'd been visiting. I also question how well they treat their employees since they all seem perpetually malcontented. Meanwhile, Trader Joes employees continue to behave genuinely friendly and seem relatively happy. I even prefer shopping at Sprouts which doesn't have as big a selection(aside from their massive supplements section) but it's a less pretentious atmosphere and has more reasonably priced produce that's actually fresh. Millenials(pukes in own mouth for using said term) aren't as brand-loyal as their parents were and are quick to ditch a brand when something better & faster comes along. Just because they're "Whole Foods" doesn't mean that they can stay complacent or start behaving like an average grocery store without sudden consequences.
- rwc 10y ago
  The staff "perpetual malcontent" is also a problem at my local Whole Foods, and the thing that keeps me shopping elsewhere.
- tracker1 10y ago
  Also a Sprouts fan for produce... pretty consistently higher quality than other local options. I'll still get meat elsewhere, and tend not to use them for frozen or boxed goods. I will get the dry/bulk stuff there though. About the only think I'll go to WF or AJs for is more exotic mushroom varieties.
EternalData 10y ago
It would be ironic if mainstream commercialization of a movement led to the utter dilution of its ideals into nothing more than a catchy, empty buzzword. continues strolling around in a Che shirt
leovonl 10y ago
Different perspective: I live in Canada, next to a Whole Foods (Unionville). If you compare prices of organic food and quality, Whole Foods is better and chair than any other place. Maybe downtown Toronto would be cheaper, but then I won't travel 35km for groceries. The only thing I really dislike is the lack of true organic meat selection (only ABF) and they don't have things like lard.
33a 10y ago
Could also be a broader sign the economy is struggling. People have less money to blow on expensive groceries and are scaling back purchasing.
mrfusion 10y ago
Do you guys know of organic is worth it? I guess if I could get a list of pesticides and herbicides I'm avoiding it would bring me more value. Right now I have no idea if it's a gimmic or what.
I_am_neo 10y ago
Personally, if I can help it I'll find a small dirty old corner of some country side road veggie stand, for really fresh semi organic unprocessed foods. And if also if I can help it, I won't shop some where with an IPO. I just can not come to believe a process groomed to attract investment dollars is even half way close to the goal of being some what good for society, any part, any where in society

191 points by DiabloD3 10y ago

> Apart from shuttering stores and stalling expansion plans, the company is continuing to focus on 365 by Whole Foods, a two-year-old division aimed at launching stores for “value-conscious” consumers. Without a doubt, generic organics is where we are going. I don't often shop at Whole Foods because I can't get my whole list there for a reasonable price compared to buying mostly a mix of organic and Simple Truth at Kroger. It's not worth making a separate trip just for a few things. If WF zoned in on this space more that could change things.

Animats 10y ago

Basic problem: "Organic" food production costs are not that much higher than "inorganic" (?) food.[1] Maybe 10-20%. But the retail markups average 85%. As organic farming has become larger and more efficient, Whole Foods' competitors have cut prices, killing Whole Foods' margins. Whole Foods relies on high-margin items. The checkout areas are stuffed with homeopathic remedies, which are overpriced water. Now that's a markup. [1] https://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/download.php?id=419 https://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/download.php?id=419

the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
The link does not load for me but I doubt those numbers. Where I live (Austria) organic farming is significantly more expensive primarily because it requires more human labor. I suspect that depends on how tou regulate organic vs non organic food however.
- phillc73 10y ago
  I would be interested in some examples of the labour discrepancy. When I think of the difference attributable to organic farming it is mainly around lower crop yields.
- gajomi 10y ago
  I would be curious to hear a bit more about this. From my recollection, just about every single piece of vegetable matter in any given Viennese Billa would come from outside Austria (potatoes being the exception). Is there US style industrial agriculture in Austria (I'm afraid I never ventured out of Wien and surrounding Niederosterreich area)?
  - bosie 10y ago
    That depends on the season though, in summer almost everything seems to come from austrian farms. we don't have us style industrial agriculture in austria. our fields are tiny compared to the US (avg farm size is 40 acres; and we really don't have those superfarms [2000+ acres] that seem to be common in the US). same goes for livestock, a farmer doesn't have anywhere near the same number of say kettle on his/her farm.
    - Thlom 10y ago
      I drove through some farmlands in California on vacation a few years ago, and the magnitude is astonishing. Never seen anything close in Europe.
      - tracker1 10y ago
        Driving between SF and Portland on the I-5 is definitely some impressive sights in terms of farm land.
  - phillc73 10y ago
    I don't really know a great deal about farming in Austria, but as the other poster pointed out, there isn't really industrial agriculture US style that I am aware of. However, a couple of examples: - Austria has a pretty decent wine industry, with vineyard clusters in numerous locations around the country; south east Styria, Krems/Wachau, Burgenland, just south of Vienna. - In Styria, there's plenty of pumpkin growing, which are mostly used to make pumpkin oil, which is an outstanding salad dressing. - Also in Styria, there is a pretty big apple growing industry around Gleisdorf/Weiz to the east of Graz. - There are some reasonably big cropping operations in the east of the country in Burgenland where the landscape is more rolling hills than high alps.
- jonasvp 10y ago
  I suspect the American interpretation of "organic" is much less strict than the European one. Also, there would probably be much less regulation and control of the production process because free market.
DodgyEggplant 10y ago
From a personal friend who is an organic farmer: (a) organic food is hard to do in large fields, since the plants can easily catch anything, and the farmer looses the entire crop.It happens much more than non organic. So the farmer must use very small portions of fields, each with different type of plant, and thus minimise the risk. So no economy of scale (b) you can't use the same plants again and again on the same field, and the cycle of changing plants each time requires to build, dismantle and rebuild another infrastructure each time (c) can't keep in refrigerators long time, so what is not sold quickly, is lost
- Fej 10y ago
  I thought crop rotation was good for the soil?
  - Filligree 10y ago
    It is. The farmer's complaint is that they have to do it.
  - shagie 10y ago
    It is. But there's also the "how large is the rotation?" There's the typical cash crop rotation: corn to soy. This has the advantage of cash crop and cash crop. These are both well known and the differences in weather over the course of a growing season are minimized - if its a drought year, you've got the appropriate hybrid. If its a wet year, you've got the appropriate hybrid. Very predictable. Adding wheat into the rotation helps. http://www.cornandsoybeandigest.com/make-wheat-work http://www.cornandsoybeandigest.com/make-wheat-work http://www.agriculture.com/crops/wheat/adding-wheat-to-cnsoybe-rotations-helps_144-ar46231 http://www.agriculture.com/crops/wheat/adding-wheat-to-cnsoy... - but then this also means different equipment to harvest and a different market. When one goes to the idealistic organic the cycle could be: corn, beans, reddish, onion, melon, sunflower, broccoli, carrots, tomatoes. Rather extreme, but an example. Also note that onions and garlic can be mixed, as can peans and beans... but that is the idea. This works nicely for the home garden plots but when trying to rotate with hundreds of acres of fields its a bit more challenging. Instead of two or three means of harvest its nine different types of plants - tomato harvest is completely unlike corn harvest. Furthermore, it means that the farmer is a bit more at the mercy of the weather (great year for corn, but you've planted radishes because you just had corn two years ago and would need some pesticides or go to a GMO variety of corn... and that's not organic anymore) and the markets (there's no demand for the things that are in the next three seasons in the harvest - do you skip forward four?).

Aloha 10y ago

One of my friends nicknamed Whole Foods as "Whole Paycheck" - its apt. I was absolutely aghast at the prices at whole foods the first time I went in. 6 dollars for a gallon of milk, for example. I love the selection of Whole Foods - I don't like the price however enough to shop there. When I need something you'd typically find at the "organic" food store, I'm much more likely to go find a local co-op type place, which while not much cheaper, leaves me feeling a little better about myself when I'm done shopping.

pfranz 10y ago
It might be where I live, but the sticker shock of Whole Foods just seemed like a veneer for me (things I don't buy)--although, it's probably just how I shop. The big thing I noticed was the natural, but not organic items were way cheaper at Whole Foods than the grocery store. Things like cage-free eggs, basic peanut butter (just peanuts and salt), or almond milk. The organic things, prepared food, soaps and stuff were all ludicrously priced. Co-ops, farmers market, or a place like Trader Joes is still cheaper, but not always available. But I'm probably not the kind of person driving up their profits.
bosie 10y ago
I have never been to the US but is 6 dollars for a gallon of organic milk considered a lot? What do you normally pay for it?
- vidoc 10y ago
  That would be cheap for a gallon!
  - ZephyrP 10y ago
    In San Francisco at Foods Co (Folsom & 14th), a gallon of milk is presently $2.49.
    - vidoc 10y ago
      But it's not organic is it? I'm sure across the street at Rainbow Market the gal will be organic and much much more than $6, but hey I dislike milk so it's just a rough guess :P Besides, I've always been impressed by the symbolic beauty of the proximity of both stores, you couldn't get a better metaphor of how the city is changing.

godzillabrennus 10y ago

Competition has lowered the prices on the same goods and its killing their business model. Time for them to lower prices, increase automation to cut labor costs and end employee benefits to be as competitive. Except of course they can't because politically their customers want to feel good about shopping there. That would vanish if the employees benefited less.

jsz0 10y ago

Whole Food's prices went way past absurd. I can't afford too shop there anymore unless I'm very careful about what I buy. Almost every single item is 40-50% more expensive. When I first started shopping there I feel like it was closer to 15-20% more expensive which was acceptable. I don't care if $2.50 poor people grocery store PopTarts kill me 15 minutes sooner than the Whole Foods bullshit whatever alternative. That's just fine. I'll give up my 15 minutes to save all that money.

jimmywanger 10y ago
> Almost every single item is 40-50% more expensive. This study begs to differ, and it was done 8 months ago. Regular produce is about 20% more expensive, and meat is 50% more expensive, as it turns out. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-more-expensive-is-whole-foods-2016-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-more-expensive-is-wh... > I don't care if $2.50 poor people grocery store PopTarts kill me 15 minutes sooner than the Whole Foods bullshit whatever alternative. The "Whole Foods bullshit whatever alternative" is making your own toast with jam, which is orders of magnitude less expensive. If you're really concerned about food budgets, processed foods are the worst possible thing you can buy.
- sokoloff 10y ago
  I find the meat quality at Whole Foods to be quite good. We do most of our shopping at Star Market (a mid-range "normal" supermarket) and the meat there is OK, but if we're making a meal where meat is the feature, we're pretty likely to make a special trip to WFM to get the steaks.
  - luck_fenovo 10y ago
    Do you have a local butcher? Whole Foods has nice meat, but I've always gotten better from a butcher shop (though I generally only go there when, as you said, the meat is the feature of the meal).
    - sokoloff 10y ago

kobeya 10y ago

Well, why should I shop at Whole Foods when I can go to Sprouts (or some other alternative) and get basically the same thing for almost regular/non-organic prices? Then again, the fine article says Sprouts et al are also hurting...

wanderr 10y ago
I was surprised it said Sprouts was also in trouble, the one near us seems to get lots of business and we go there every week as well, for produce sometimes their organic stuff is even cheaper than Safeway's conventional produce so it's a no-brainer. IMO the only way Sprouts could improve is being bigger, still end up having to go to Safeway for lots of stuff Sprouts doesn't carry...but Whole Foods isn't even in the equation for us.
glitcher 10y ago
Definitely agree with this. Add to it that Trader Joe's has a nice variety of prepared foods on their own brand that are also substantially less expensive than WF. It's a very telling sign where I live that the WF are primarily only in the most upscale neighborhoods, while Sprouts locations are much more accessible (and they always seem to be busy).
adventured 10y ago
It appears Sprouts is suffering margin compression more than a sales hit. They're generating about the same net income as they did in fiscal 2014, but their sales are roughly 30% higher. If one believes in their long-term trajectory, the stock is 50% off from the IPO in 2013.
- someguydave 10y ago
  That's a shame, Sprouts is my family's primary grocery store.

london888 10y ago

Isn't one reason organic costs more that customers will pay more for it?

grigjd3 10y ago
Yes. Also, see prices for "artisinal" cheeses.

yuhong 10y ago

OT, but Whole Foods Code Of Business Conduct at http://s21.q4cdn.com/118642233/files/doc_downloads/governance_documents/CodeofBusinessConduct-Dec-7-2016.pdf http://s21.q4cdn.com/118642233/files/doc_downloads/governanc... still have the approval requirements for postings.

ianai 10y ago

It's not just about organic food. These sorts of stores cater to niches that the larger chains do not.

vidoc 10y ago
Exactly, and they also maintain a higher image of Quality/Luxury by not carrying a lot of products you'd find in most normal stores likes Safeway or similar (1). 1: Those stores that have carts that you can actually use to shop without being a CEO.

yourapostasy 10y ago

Most if not all WFM stores hold tours for customers to teach how to affordably shop WFM. Ask about it. The TL;DR is only buy fresh vegetables, single-item bulks, fruit, meats, and seafood in descending order of volume/mass. The less processing and packaging, the better as a rule of thumb. Round out very sparingly with exceptions. This is how we should shop regardless of store. Mackey has publicly admitted he vastly regrets taking WFM to Wall Street. I get the impression if most customers shopped as described above, crushing profit margins, in the absence of shareholder pressure to change WFM's real mission and cost him strategic control, and the profits are self-sustained, he wouldn't mind. I'd like to see more feedback from others on whether or not they noticed WFM's efforts to broaden beyond just an organic label. They did try, and to a smaller extent are still trying (meat stages are a prominent example), and are trying not to antagonize regulatory stakeholders by pointing out the mainstream organic label is deficient in many ways, but by and large it seems most of their customer base is more concerned about labels than actually delivering change.

RyanZAG 10y ago
If you think of it as a 'guilt tax' it makes a lot more sense, and also the direction these stores need to go to improve profits. It's never really been about the food itself: it's been about selling a positive self image. It's a reaction to the abundance of media showing modern chicken coops and mass migrant vegetable labour. Once you understand that, you understand why the label is the single most important thing, and the less real details supplied the better. Any details you supply serves to break the facade that the organic label means you're doing good deeds - because ultimately, you're still killing that chicken. It's why "efforts to broaden beyond just an organic label" are doomed before they begin and will hurt sales more than they help.
- CuriouslyC 10y ago
  What's wrong with killing a chicken? Eating and being eaten is part of the natural order. Creating massive suffering is the aberration.
  - 10y ago

Swizec 10y ago

> Cummins pointed out that some of the most successful, most mainstream organic products don’t meet his organization’s strict definition of what organic should be. Those include the ubiquitous Earthbound Farms, which grows its lettuces in monocultures, and Aurora Organic Dairy, which has been criticized for running its operation like an industrial factory farm. What is the point of "organic" if we don't even agree on what it means? Perhaps some sort of governing agency should give it a strict legal definition. But that's probably in nobody's business interest ...

krrrh 10y ago
The USDA does define a legal definition of "organic". When they started doing this in the 90s it was very controversial in the health food community, because up until then there were various private certifications. The worry was that the USDA definition was a lowest common denominator and customers would not recognize the value in the more strict private certifications.
- torgoguys 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure that prior to the USDA stepping in, "organic" had no regulatory definition and could be used pretty willy-nilly. Now it has a definition, but I guess I am a contrarian. I find the organic industry to be pretty much a scam. It promised healthier, better tasting food. You can find studies showing that, but if you look at the totality of the literature, you find out that it isn't inherently either of those things. It is basically the naturalistic fallacy applied to the food industry on a wide-scale.
  - jMyles 10y ago
    > but if you look at the totality of the literature, you find out that it isn't inherently either of those things I haven't actually looked at the available lit in a year or so, but if this is true, it's a huge change from the last time I did. My understanding is that several very good, large studies had shown dramatic differences in organic vs orthodox food.

spike021 10y ago

Whole Foods is pretty awful when it comes to pricing. Sure they can up-charge for convenience, but when I'm out and about and want something like sliced up mango spears, why should I be paying 10+ dollars for 1.5 or 2 mangos sliced up? I could just get a couple for maybe 2 bucks at a regular grocery store and just carry a knife with me to do it myself at that point.

noodle 10y ago
You can apply that argument to basically any convenience or luxury. The answer being, some want mangos and value their time and effort more than the the difference in mango price and sliced mango price.
- spike021 10y ago
  But in some circumstances it's not necessarily that the consumer is trying to cut time and effort. For instance, if I'm out and about doing stuff and happen to want some sliced mango. It's not that I decided in advance not to buy bulk mangoes and slice them at home, I just decided spur of the moment to get some. Of course there are people who don't like slicing mangoes themselves, so for added convenience they will buy pre-sliced mangoes and bring them home or wherever specifically to eat them.
  - noodle 10y ago
    > But in some circumstances it's not necessarily that the consumer is trying to cut time and effort. > I just decided spur of the moment to get some. No, that's still cutting time and effort. Okay you want something spur of the moment. Your option is to buy it and then go home and slice it, buy it pre-sliced, or don't buy it at all. That is still a choice of convenience vs payment. You're not being forced to buy the mango.

WalterBright 10y ago

I don't shop at WF because the parking lot is too small, always full, and there's just no place to park anywhere near it.

vidoc 10y ago
> I don't shop at WF because the parking lot is too small, always full, and there's just no place to park anywhere near it. Classic! I wish people in my hood were like you and bailed out instead of lining up and blocking the traffic to enter their parking lot, totally pisses me off!
massysett 10y ago
Same here. Used to live somewhat close to a Whole Foods in DC. It had a small parking lot that filled in peak hours, and there was no other place to park even if I paid. Of course the lot was half filled with cab drivers buying $10 worth of food, thus pushing out customers willing to fill a $200 cart. The full lot and tiny carts showed this store was not set up for someone buying a lot of food. I stopped going.

DiabloD3 10y ago

So, where I live, we don't have things like Whole Foods and Sprouts. We have a tiny little specialty store in town that carries a very small amount of interesting, but expensive, organic and whatnot brands (but almost invariably, not what I'm looking for, but they're always willing to order it and sell it to me for far more than I can just order online for).... I've seen people both worship and shit on Whole Foods, have seen Sprouts described as a "Whole Foods that didn't sell its soul to Wall Street", and I've heard Trader Joes described as "half a grocery store, so you can't do all your shopping there, but its the half you want". We have two national chains in town with big stores, a couple smaller quasi-chains (IGA, etc), and a Super Walmart, so its not like its some out of the place hole in the wall.... So, what's the draw of Whole Foods (and by extension, Sprouts and the other clones)?

divbit 10y ago
The draw imo is the following: you try to find e.g. a tortilla at 'average big chain supermarket' without any hydrogenated oils, and it's going to take 20 minutes of reading ingredients, and even then maybe there just aren't any. At Trader Joe- the standard tortilla (i.e. the trader joe brand tortilla) is made of basically the same ingredients you would use if you made it at home, and the price is reasonable. Whole foods is like a version of that, but rather than having everything be 'whole foods' brand, it's a bunch of fancy hipster brands. Sprouts is like that but with a very large selection of fruits and vegetables of usually higher quality than you can find at your standard grocery.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  Even Wal-Mart sells tortillas with a bare minimum of ingredients these days and they are dirt cheap. I can't find them listed online. Not sure if it's due to ethnic tastes around here or what, but they are definitely there, and they are very good.
  - matwood 10y ago
    I know people hate on WM for all sorts of reasons, but if it's a packaged product they are hard to beat on price. I would not eat any of the 'fresh' things from WM though.

Raed667 10y ago

I don't understand why organic food is this expensive in the US in places like WFM. In France for example 'bio' tagged food is getting cheaper everyday, some products are sometimes even cheaper than their counter-part.

mcguire 10y ago
I doubt that organic food is "expensive", except in comparison; 'non-organic' is very cheap. Industrial agriculture works very well, with some quality tradeoffs.
vidoc 10y ago
> I don't understand why organic food is this expensive in the US in places like WFM. I have been wondering about this myself, products labeled 'organic' have varying degrees of quality that I assume are reflected in distributor price. Now, while in my experience WF tends to mostly have higher quality organic stuff on their shelves than my other go-to stores, my intuition is that their markup is pretty important. When I think about it, it seems apparent that WF and similar stores simply have a strategy of luxury: the higher prices are a statement, in addition to improving the perceived value of the products to the buyer, they also secure a relative exclusivity. In other words, they've gone a little bit apple-store of food.
briandear 10y ago
Using France as an example, a liter of organic milk at my local Super U is about €0.50 more expensive than the equivalent non-organic -- this is comparing the Super U store brand -- which should eliminate "branding" markup from the equation.
- vidoc 10y ago
  What's funny is that the price difference between both countries is almost anecdotal in the case of milk. You would probably have a heart attack if you saw the price of cheese, and not only imported cheese, domestic 'artisanal' cheese too. The prices are just borderline grotesque, they are so extreme that they basically sell cheese pre-cut, in tiny tiny quantities. Most consumers ignore the fact that different kinds of cheeses should be cut a certain way for actual reasons and not out of sheer snobbism, consequently they sell them the pointe and the talon at the same price, lol! Can't resist: the other day we made a 3 cheese fondue for four and it costed us close to a benjamin just in cheese at WF!

rodionos 10y ago

I've been their loyal customer to the extent that I would try to book hotels not too far from one of their stores when going on extended business trips, say 1 week+. Because I tend to shop for the same items I also noticed that prices have gone up substantially, sometimes 3-4 times over the last 10 years, e.g. specialty teas. This is contrary to what's discussed in the article (prices falling).

icantdrive55 10y ago
In my store, they did lower the price of milk, eggs, flour, sugar, potatoes, and their house brand of cheeses. They really did try to lower the prices of some, some of the basics. They do have a lost liter wine for $2.49 a bottle. They hide it. Forget the name. I despised Whole Foods for years. It was just like throwing away money. My father couldn't even pass the stores--he would take a side road just to avoid the parking lot, even when he had a tumor in his liver. My dad didn't understand high prices, or throwing away money. Anyways, a relative whom is too old to drive, had me take her there. She bought all the expensive items because she could. I didn't buy anything, until a few years ago; they really did lower the prices on certain foods. (If anyone from corporate happens to read this--get rid of uniformed security. Hire undercover on the stores with high customer theft. For what you charge, I don't want to see security guards. While I'm at it get rid of the time clock sensors the Janitors scan. The job is degrading enough, you don't need to micromanage them. If I'm paying extra; treat all employees well. Yea, I do notice.)
- _JamesA_ 10y ago
  > While I'm at it get rid of the time clock sensors the Janitors scan. The job is degrading enough, you don't need to micromanage them. If I'm paying extra; treat all employees well. Yea, I do notice.) Those 'clock sensors' aka sweep logs [1] are for legal purposes. Slip and fall claims are a major liability in the grocery industry. [1]: http://www.blanelaw.com/blog/sweep-logs-establishing-notice-of-a-store-owner-on-a-ca-slip-fall-case.cfm http://www.blanelaw.com/blog/sweep-logs-establishing-notice-...

narrator 10y ago

Organic food is vastly more popular now and thus Whole foods had more competition from the likes of Walmart and Costco in the organic produce space. This has driven margins down and that has cut into their profit margins.

Eerie 10y ago

Kill your food before eating, then it won't struggle.

anu7df 10y ago

I don't really see why the whole foods hate is so hip. I shop there routinely and buy mostly the non packaged stuff. Organic vegetables and fruits are cheaper than in most chains and I really have not found any other place where I can get grass fed (tasty), pasteurized (convenient), non homogenized (yes it makes a difference. In taste and texture and arguably healthier) milk. Of course I do not buy the silly precut fruits and stuff. But if someone finds it convenient and doesn't mind spending the money I don't care. But in the end I shop there because most stuff there is made from good simple ingredients and I don't have to spend a long time reading ingredient lists especially the ones that changes often

hijinks 10y ago
I tend to agree that the fresh fruits and veggies are pretty much the same price as competitors (really only experience is Safeway) What I do find as a plus is Whole Foods tends to get more stuff locally if they can and a store like Safeway is going more regional or to Mexico to keep its costs down. I'll pay a little more to have my fresh food being sourced locally and more time to ripen on the vine then ripen in a truck.
matwood 10y ago
> Organic vegetables and fruits are cheaper than in most chains I recently discovered the above, and after paying attention there are many items that are less expensive at WF. The whole fresh fruits and vegetables are the same price or cheaper than other local chains, and are also very high quality. The only place that beats them on price is Walmart, but quality is hit and miss (normally miss). I have found beer and wine to be $1-$2 cheaper at WF than local chains. Not everything of course, but I tend to keep the same wine and beer around the house so I notice pricing. Good cheese can also be had for less money at WF. The WF brand whole bean coffee is also cheaper than anything else I have found locally. If frugality is the goal I have found that for most packaged stuff Walmart is the way to go. Then WF for fruits and veggies, and finally Harris Teeter (local chain in the south) for meats (never ending special boneless/skinless chicken breasts are always $1.99/lb).
- angry-hacker 10y ago

patsplat 10y ago

I stopped going to whole foods after getting food poisoning from a lunch buffet plate that cost $18. They overcharge, and don't deliver the quality to justify the markup. http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/addressing-grocery-weight-and-pricing http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/addressing-grocery-weig... > "As has been reported in the media, our New York City stores were audited by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) for weights-and-measures errors, such as those that cause improper price labeling on some of the products that are produced, packaged and labeled in our stores."

Spooky23 10y ago

The bullshit parts about Whole Foods were bullshit a decade ago. The difference is that their quality has declined and others are catching up. The food bar was near restaurant quality in 2006, now it's slop at 3x the cost. You also have to be careful about date labels, my local store will relabel old inventory and add a few weeks to the sell by dare. Also, Amazon impacts them harder because WF lost their monopoly on weird organic product. It's the typical big company story. They grew too fast. I'm sure the supply chain is a shitshow.

rickdale 10y ago
my local store will relabel old inventory and add a few weeks to the sell by dare Can you elaborate on this? I totally agree with your other point that others are catching up and I think they realized they don't need to have an entire organic store just certain key items(grass fed beef, good produce to make everyone happy.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Perfect example: they sampled jalapeño Brie with some fancy cracker and fig jam. I was shopping for a Christmas party and bought two of each. We used one for the party. It was dated with a 2/28/17 sell by date. The little cheese wheel was wrapped in plastic. Unwrap it, as I did last week, and lo and behold, the date sticker under the plastic wrap says 12/21/16. They play similar games with cut fruit and other stuff. I can get same or better stuff at Hannaford for 1/3 the cost.
vidoc 10y ago
> The bullshit parts about Whole Foods were bullshit a decade ago. What you say is very interesting as I have often heard people tell me how much better the quality of their products was when they 'started'. As I have precisely only lived in the US for a decade, I'd be very curious to know how the evolution of quality for regular stores such as Safeway, or other supermarkets of similar standing where people with working class wages can fill a whole cart. I sort of have the intuition that there must have been sort of a shift in the past 20 years, possibly when the GMOs were imposed to Americans, where Excellent food became Regular and Regular food became Substandard. Now I realize I might just be somewhere close to entirely wrong right there :P

tptacek 10y ago

* Whole Foods produce is bad. We get better produce at our local major grocery chain, and much better at the Mexican grocery. * Whole Foods bet big on prepared food; about 1/4 of our local Whole Foods is essentially a food court. * Whole Foods has a sort of Trader Joe's phenomenon where the place is gradually filling up with house brand stuff. But unlike TJ's, WF's house brands aren't relabeled good outside brands; they're mostly pretty bad, and WF tends to carry them to the exclusion of any other product, so I can get 5 different kinds of chicken stock at a big chain grocer and just WF's house brand at WF. Things Whole Foods in Chicagoland is better at than other grocers: * Meat. * Seasonal vegetables; no other grocer is going to carry ramps this May. * Cheese. * A decent house-brand olive oil. I think that's it.

matwood 10y ago
> Whole Foods bet big on prepared food; about 1/4 of our local Whole Foods is essentially a food court. I think this is also what led everyone to feel/think that WF is 100% more expensive than anywhere else. After trying the food court awhile back, and paying what was essentially $20 for a tiny box of food, it took me years to try WF again.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  It seems that all the "high-quality" stores in my area do the food court as well. Sometimes it's nice, and I get a salad for lunch there a few times a year, but it's always somewhat overpriced. I think there is a subpopulation of wealthy people who never cook, that these grocers are chasing. It's understandable that if WF were the only store in the area serving those customers, it would do well. Now that lots of stores have a food court, it's probably not as lucrative for them.
  - robotjosh 10y ago
    Its a golden corral except your plate costs 2-3x as much and you don't get seconds.
  - alexhutcheson 10y ago

rojobuffalo 10y ago

Have any of you guys looked into CSAs? It's basically a seasonal subscription to products from individual local farms.

gregd 10y ago
We've done numerous CSAs, even a bean CSA. The issue that we had with most CSAs is that we didn't have choices in what vegetables we got. There were just some vegetables in our house, that no matter how you cooked them, they just wouldn't get eaten. On the plus side though, you're exposed to a wide variety of stuff to choose from and it can be a great way to get more veggies in your life and support your local farmers.
- rojobuffalo 10y ago
  Were the recipes not that good or was it more a lack of motivation to prepare and eat all those vegetables? Would it make a difference if you knew which varieties were coming ahead of time or is it more just a function of having choice?
  - gregd 10y ago
    It wasn't the recipes, my wife is an awesome cook. The lack of choice was just irritating. There are only so many ways you can use garlic whistles.
    - rojobuffalo 10y ago
      They're pretty good for pickling and flame-grilling. I get your point though. I'm actually hacking on an idea I had 2 days ago that I think might address this issue of choice with CSA distributions.
      - gregd 10y ago
        I would be extremely interested in seeing what you come up with. Will it be on terra.farm?

philip1209 10y ago

I'm surprised that the 365 concept does not have an in-house butcher. I think it strongly strongly correlates with the quality of meat. I've seen many friends go to Whole Foods just for fresh meat, then Trader Joes for everything else.

robotjosh 10y ago

I used to shop only at whole foods, happily paying $200 for 3 paper bags of groceries. Then in 2009 their CEO spouted some libertarian crap how he was against healthcare reform. I was shocked that whole foods wasn't run by hippies. At that point I did some research and found that the 365 store brand that claims to be organic actually just buys ingredients from china that china claims is organic. Who is verifying it is genuinely organic, the crazy libertarian CEO? I doubt it!

peter303 10y ago

Our local Krogers has taken Whole Foods and Trader Joes head on offering a broad line of oganic, vegetarian and vegan items. I'll go there for the price and basics, then to TJ for variety.

dota_fanatic 10y ago

This is aside from the organic thing, but probably plays a part. I've had two friends work there for over a year, one in the 90s and one in the past couple of years, and in both cases, management was just grinding through employees. The recent run ended when they cut employees and expanded duties for the remaining folks (two or more jobs now in one), with no increase in pay and no increase in technology at hand to justify the ability of one person doing what used to take two in full-time shifts. Yeahhh he quit soon after that. I tended to avoid WF in favor of Trader Joe's, Sprouts, Natural Grocers, and straight from farmers, but after hearing how they treat their employees, again, that's just one more reason not to give them business...

tsunamifury 10y ago

Whole Foods just opened a new store in North Berkeley that no one wanted, and was in the midst of four! other natural grocery stores. They then had the gall to offer almost entirely their 365 brand of subpar products, compared to the very premium offers of their counterparts in the area. They are somewhat busy, but never packed, as locals all prefer the far better offerings at neighborhood locations. As soon as they opened that store I realized someone at HQ was either clueless or arrogantly thought theyd just move in and dominate. Looks like they are getting their just desserts.

mrits 10y ago
They don't have to initially dominate. They just have to outlast the other stores.
467568985476 10y ago
According the the article, their decline is actually for the opposite reason. Big-box mainstream grocery stores are now selling similar products, and customers are going there rather than Whole Foods or smaller organic food stores.

headShrinker 10y ago

My perspective is maybe a little different from the rest of the country's. In NYC all of the stores are really expensive and quality control is pretty bad. Produce and product choices are limited and quality is absolutely terrible. Whole Foods is actually one of the less expensive grocery stores. The quality is easily the best in the neighborhood. The employees are noticeably nicer, and I can pay with my phone. They do have some local suppliers, which Gristedies doesn't. Lastly, and probably least important to everyone but it's a pet-peeve of mine, the ice cream hasn't thawed and frozen in to a brick (a common side-effect of living on an island, frozen things get melted).

untilHellbanned 10y ago
Ye ole anecdote to the rescue. Ignoring the point of the article.
galdosdi 10y ago
Gristedes is a joke. Not sure why that's your go-to comparison. Have you tried some more affordable "normal" supermarkets like Key Foods, C Town, Western Beef, etc? You might still complain about quality (don't know your standards), but you won't be complaining about price at least any more. Trader Joe's is also fantastic (good quality, good deals on anything-but-produce, get that from C Town instead), if you can bear the lines (the wait time is not as bad as it looks) or just come in at an off-peak time.
- guiseroom 10y ago
  Trader Joe's has terrible produce and meat with a short shelf life. Too many times I've bought rice and boxed pasta that contain dead bugs that float to the top when boiling.
  - r00fus 10y ago
    As long as we're sharing anecdata, in my experience TJs has decent quality control... but it depends a bit store to store.
  - 10y ago

conorcleary 10y ago

South Park? :)

appleiigs 10y ago

Whole Foods is struggling... ok, that was the easy part. Now what can they do about it? Most comments here are about their price. They can't race to the bottom. If you were running the business, what would you do?

tracker1 10y ago
Improve customer service in general, bring the food court options back to the quality they apparently used to be at. People will pay uprate prices for quality and service. WF has been slipping in these areas and that doesn't match the value for the pricing. Also, they expanded well beyond what is supported based on their pricing demographic.

anu7df 10y ago

Lot of the comments talk about co-op as an alternative to whole foods. I live in Houston Texas. Other than " There in lies the problem" can some suggest a reasonable alternative for getting some good organic vegetables and fruits. The farmers markets are usually honey, eggs and beef stalls. The co-ops I have found usually are higher price per pound than whole foods. Traders Joe here has limited selection of everything. HEB is OK but not many organic choices for milk and meat. I understand this has nothing to do with the article. Are there any good options for people in biggish cities away from southern California. Gosh I miss those farmers markets..

tracker1 10y ago
I tend to just shop at the different stores mostly depending on the main thing I'm going for... one day may be mostly produce at sprouts.. another meat at Basha's... another general groceries at Fry's... another mostly frozen/boxed at WM superstore. I try to keep a few things on hand at all times, and will shop at different stores for mainly the thing they are best at with differing times/days. I tend not to shop at multiple places on the same day, I just don't care for shopping that much. If you have a good spot for your preferred milk/meat, just get that there, get other stuff elsewhere. There's nothing that says you have to buy everything on the same day/trip.
ConroyBumpus 10y ago
The HEB Central Market on Westheimer might have more of what you're looking for insofar as Organic meat.

Overtonwindow 10y ago

A plastic bottle of water with a single asparagus in it labeled "asparagus water" for $4.99. That's why Whole Foods is struggling. People are sick of being screwed with by a corporation.

majewsky 10y ago
How is that "being screwed"? It's not like you're being forced to buy this particular item.

MengerSponge 10y ago

Does nobody care about their institutional dishonesty? Defrauding customers is good for short-term profits, but it might cause long-term issues. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/foods-accused-overcharging-exaggerating-weight-packaged-foods-officials/story?id=32002573 http://abcnews.go.com/Business/foods-accused-overcharging-ex...

gumby 10y ago
This seems to be part of the original company culture. Even back WF had only two stores, the original downtown and the one on mo pac (mid 1980s) they got in trouble with the attorney general for labeling conventional stuff as organic and marking it up.

socrates1998 10y ago

I don't really shop there anymore other than the occasional thing that only they have that I really want. I am in South Florida and it's the most expensive grocery store by far, like 20-30% it feels like for almost the same items. This is subjective for sure. Publix Greenwise stores and brand has done a really good job of giving me what I want for a lot cheaper. Now, I feel like Whole foods has better quality, but it's just not worth the almost ~30% premium I feel like I pay when I shop there. Also, Trader Joe's just opened up here and that place is so much better. Really, I don't want to pay that huge ass premium.

ravenstine 10y ago

I stopped shopping there because the quality of both their produce and their salad bar food plummeted a year ago. Their fruit isn't as fresh as it used to be, and they now serve the same cheap slop at their salad/hot bar. There isn't much variety anymore, either. These things are true of any Whole Foods in SoCal I'd been visiting. I also question how well they treat their employees since they all seem perpetually malcontented. Meanwhile, Trader Joes employees continue to behave genuinely friendly and seem relatively happy. I even prefer shopping at Sprouts which doesn't have as big a selection(aside from their massive supplements section) but it's a less pretentious atmosphere and has more reasonably priced produce that's actually fresh. Millenials(pukes in own mouth for using said term) aren't as brand-loyal as their parents were and are quick to ditch a brand when something better & faster comes along. Just because they're "Whole Foods" doesn't mean that they can stay complacent or start behaving like an average grocery store without sudden consequences.

rwc 10y ago
The staff "perpetual malcontent" is also a problem at my local Whole Foods, and the thing that keeps me shopping elsewhere.
tracker1 10y ago
Also a Sprouts fan for produce... pretty consistently higher quality than other local options. I'll still get meat elsewhere, and tend not to use them for frozen or boxed goods. I will get the dry/bulk stuff there though. About the only think I'll go to WF or AJs for is more exotic mushroom varieties.

EternalData 10y ago

It would be ironic if mainstream commercialization of a movement led to the utter dilution of its ideals into nothing more than a catchy, empty buzzword. continues strolling around in a Che shirt

leovonl 10y ago

Different perspective: I live in Canada, next to a Whole Foods (Unionville). If you compare prices of organic food and quality, Whole Foods is better and chair than any other place. Maybe downtown Toronto would be cheaper, but then I won't travel 35km for groceries. The only thing I really dislike is the lack of true organic meat selection (only ABF) and they don't have things like lard.

33a 10y ago

Could also be a broader sign the economy is struggling. People have less money to blow on expensive groceries and are scaling back purchasing.

mrfusion 10y ago

Do you guys know of organic is worth it? I guess if I could get a list of pesticides and herbicides I'm avoiding it would bring me more value. Right now I have no idea if it's a gimmic or what.

I_am_neo 10y ago

Personally, if I can help it I'll find a small dirty old corner of some country side road veggie stand, for really fresh semi organic unprocessed foods. And if also if I can help it, I won't shop some where with an IPO. I just can not come to believe a process groomed to attract investment dollars is even half way close to the goal of being some what good for society, any part, any where in society