4 ms·

Whole Foods admits trying to sell asparagus water for $6 was a mistake (2015)

32 points by colinprince 8y ago

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
It's only a mistake because it didn't catch on.
- jonas21 8y ago
  Yeah, this is no more ridiculous than charging $6 for a bottle of water because it's been shipped halfway across the world.
- inherentFloyd 8y ago
  Good point, but it's still pretty stupid/hilarious.
- Verdex 8y ago
  I actually came here to say the same thing (only I was going to be much more verbose). The fact of the matter is that people buy even sillier things for much more than $6. If you're happy with your $6 asparagus water, then I don't see what the problem is. In fact, the only time I would suggest that something bad is going on is, I think, when you try to convince me I'm the one in the wrong for not enjoying your weird and expensive food. Their statement indicating it was a mistake is actually much worse: "It was made incorrectly and has since been removed." So, you sold people a product that was made incorrectly. So incorrectly that you have permanently discontinued the product. Selling something stupid that doesn't take off isn't a crime, but selling something that was made "incorrectly" to such an extent that it has to be banished forever actually does sound like it should be a crime. Like, if I sold uranium water and realized it was actually horrible and not as I previously thought good so I removed it forever, then there should probably be some sort of a fine involved at the very least. Culturally this whole thing stinks. People enjoy silly things that cost too much money. Ideally, this wouldn't happen, but technically I don't see the harm. We all have to do something and if your something seems silly and expensive to me that shouldn't be a reason for me to try to stop you from having your fun. But when people try to join in and start a new silly and expensive trend, the cost of failure shouldn't be absolute ostracization. We need people to try new things or else no progress is made. If we're going to accept some silly things, then we should accept people trying to start any silly thing. And at any rate, asparagus water isn't where I would draw the line. Is expensive water really where we want our moral outrage to be focused on? And the worst of it is that the excuse they have is horrifying. If they just said, "sorry we messed up," then we could all move on with our lives. But instead they said that they, a high end food distribution service, provided their high end customers with a defective product. So defective in fact that they had to treat it like radioactive waste and banish it to Yucca mountain until the end of time. And it worked. Try something stupid that's basically the same as all the other stupid things that have already been normalized. Your company deserves to be destroyed. Excuse yourself by saying you were only trying to commit war crimes. Oh never mind, that's fine then.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    I assume it's to reduce the cognitive dissonance - you can't say "I tried to sell a stupid product" if you have a belief in your rightness. The product was RIGHT, but the implementation was bad is a lot easier to deal with if you're trying to justifying selling 2.2 oz of beef jerky for $8.00.
Jhndb 8y ago
In other news (2018): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42639479 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42639479
- freehunter 8y ago
  How are individually wrapped whole pickles still a real thing though?
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    Those are bizarre, I bought one as a gag gift once. Maybe I'm part of the problem and those products survive off their novelty factor?
josefresco 8y ago
To be fair, other stores sell just ... tap water (no asparagus!) It may be good social media outrage fodder, but asparagus water is low on the list of insanely dumb things we buy.
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
I cannot imagine when the product group was sitting around kicking out product ideas that this didn't make at least a few of them chuckle. I can imagine that at least a couple of them went home that night and, laughing, told their SO, "... and we're going to put asparagus in it and sell it for $6!!!" I mean, how could any normal person NOT laugh at this?
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  I can't wait for their cross promotion with GOOP, featuring homeopathic Gwyneth Paltrow pee.
  - ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
    If it's mixed in with Kombucha I'd probably buy it.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      I've only tried Kombucha once, but I'll admit I probably couldn't tell the difference.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  There was no product group involved. This was made with the involvement of, at most, a handful of people at a single local store. Those bottles you see in the photo may well be the entire total number of these bottles that were ever made.
- jorgesborges 8y ago
  The label makers are sophisticated and simple enough to use that anybody working in the store could have made them. I think the "product group" in this case was a manager or employee dicking around in clever ways trying to increase sales for his or her department.
jorgesborges 8y ago
It's not impossible to imagine an established brand being successful with better packaging and marketing. But it's clearly just Joe from the produce department filling bottles with water and asparagus, haphazardly slapping a generic sticker on it, and calling it a day. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the lone initiative of a creative store manager who wasn't thinking too much or hard about it. I've seen equally egregious products at Starbucks.
- jbob2000 8y ago
  > clearly just Joe from the produce department filling bottles with water and asparagus Oh this is even better! You're telling me the asparagus water is hand-made? And Made in America? Bump that price to $10, this shit is gold! And fire Joe and replace him with Jane and then we can charge $15.
freehunter 8y ago
I don't get the controversy. Now, I would never buy asparagus water, but I also don't shop at Whole Foods. It's long been known that Whole Foods is historically a place that sells a lot of merchandise that is not necessary but is trendy, and they charge a premium for it. You could just as easily say that sparkling water is a mistake when you can get tap water and seltzer tablets for cheaper, or that Coca Cola is a mistake when you can get sugar and caramel and water and mix them yourself. Asparagus water sounds awful to me. But so does a lot of stuff that normal people buy, things that are not strictly necessary for survival but people like for some reason. This article is just "hey Whole Foods is expensive and trendy, has anyone noticed this?"
- msla 8y ago
  > This article is just "hey Whole Foods is expensive and trendy, has anyone noticed this?" The "controversy" was just Red Tribe scoring points on Blue Tribe, nothing more. (Never mind that putting Whole Foods in the Blue Tribe is pure stereotype, it's a well-known stereotype, and a potent one. Remember the hate Obama got for ordering arugula?)
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    >Never mind that putting Whole Foods in the Blue Tribe is pure stereotype Who is doing that, other than you? The article is from the CBC, hardly some right wing rag..
- giancarlostoro 8y ago
  > You could just as easily say that sparkling water is a mistake when you can get tap water and seltzer tablets for cheaper, or that Coca Cola is a mistake when you can get sugar and caramel and water and mix them yourself. Not sure how you will get the coca / kola[0] taste in there though. Edit: fixed cocoa to coca/kola. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola#Coca_%E2%80%93_cocaine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola#Coca_%E2%80%93_cocai...
  - will_brown 8y ago
avgDev 8y ago
I honestly did not understand the outrage with the asparagus water. Company makes a product, if someone is willing to buy it the company will continue to make it. If nobody buys it, company stops making it. Yes it was a weird decision, but people buy 'diamond' water (btw it dropped in price if you are interested, probably due to low demand)
throwaway5752 8y ago
If you think that's bad, there are people that don't vaccinate their kids on the intended schedule and others that demand antibiotics for viral infections. There are others that take new, $30k+ cars and use them to Uber not taking depreciation on their vehicle into account. This is may be easy to laugh at, but there are plenty of things that are much more stupid that people regularly do. edit: fine, downvote me. But if you actually read the article and look at the the reaction of people, you'd think that was in the top 100 stupid things that you could name off the top of your head. The fact that I'm even being downvoted as controversial for mentioning vaccines/antiobitic overprescription/unprofitable gig economy participation is much closer to a "fall of Rome" type behavior than a stupid item on the shelf at a grocery store. edit 2: here's a free example of much stupider behavior we take for granted: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autos-trucks-texas/huge-pricey-trucks-haul-jobs-and-profits-for-the-detroit-three-idUSKCN1PU1E4 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autos-trucks-texas/hu... (grossly oversized, inefficient trucks that causing poor strategic moves at US automakers as a result of trade protections for a specific class of vehicles... and I have nothing against pickup trucks, but these $70k luxury cars are the truck equivalent of $1k air jordans)
darkpuma 8y ago
Quirky products don't bother me. What bothers me more is fraudulent labeling of weights of store-packaged foods sold by weight (meats, etc). https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/06/whole-foods-under-fire-for-overcharging-customers/index.htm https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/06/whole-foods... Unfortunately this isn't uncommon in the grocery industry. Stores most often get tripped up when they sell something by the pound, package up nominal pounds of the stuff, then label each of those packages as precisely one pound when such precision is unlikely. Next time you're in the store take a look at the packages of ground beef; they'll say "$x per pound" and they should then also list a precise weight of that particular package with a price calculated for that particular package. Sometimes, not too infrequently, stores will cut corners and simply label each package as precisely one pound, with the error systematically in their favor. If you believe you've discovered a store doing this, you may be able to report that store for investigation by your local weights and measures: https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/dms/index.html https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/dms/index.html
ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
Asparagus water badly needed a new branded name... something like VitalitE Water. Its way to easy to change this headline to read "Whole Foods admits trying to sell AsparGROSS water for $6 was a mistake".

32 points by colinprince 8y ago

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

It's only a mistake because it didn't catch on.

jonas21 8y ago
Yeah, this is no more ridiculous than charging $6 for a bottle of water because it's been shipped halfway across the world.
inherentFloyd 8y ago
Good point, but it's still pretty stupid/hilarious.
Verdex 8y ago
I actually came here to say the same thing (only I was going to be much more verbose). The fact of the matter is that people buy even sillier things for much more than $6. If you're happy with your $6 asparagus water, then I don't see what the problem is. In fact, the only time I would suggest that something bad is going on is, I think, when you try to convince me I'm the one in the wrong for not enjoying your weird and expensive food. Their statement indicating it was a mistake is actually much worse: "It was made incorrectly and has since been removed." So, you sold people a product that was made incorrectly. So incorrectly that you have permanently discontinued the product. Selling something stupid that doesn't take off isn't a crime, but selling something that was made "incorrectly" to such an extent that it has to be banished forever actually does sound like it should be a crime. Like, if I sold uranium water and realized it was actually horrible and not as I previously thought good so I removed it forever, then there should probably be some sort of a fine involved at the very least. Culturally this whole thing stinks. People enjoy silly things that cost too much money. Ideally, this wouldn't happen, but technically I don't see the harm. We all have to do something and if your something seems silly and expensive to me that shouldn't be a reason for me to try to stop you from having your fun. But when people try to join in and start a new silly and expensive trend, the cost of failure shouldn't be absolute ostracization. We need people to try new things or else no progress is made. If we're going to accept some silly things, then we should accept people trying to start any silly thing. And at any rate, asparagus water isn't where I would draw the line. Is expensive water really where we want our moral outrage to be focused on? And the worst of it is that the excuse they have is horrifying. If they just said, "sorry we messed up," then we could all move on with our lives. But instead they said that they, a high end food distribution service, provided their high end customers with a defective product. So defective in fact that they had to treat it like radioactive waste and banish it to Yucca mountain until the end of time. And it worked. Try something stupid that's basically the same as all the other stupid things that have already been normalized. Your company deserves to be destroyed. Excuse yourself by saying you were only trying to commit war crimes. Oh never mind, that's fine then.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  I assume it's to reduce the cognitive dissonance - you can't say "I tried to sell a stupid product" if you have a belief in your rightness. The product was RIGHT, but the implementation was bad is a lot easier to deal with if you're trying to justifying selling 2.2 oz of beef jerky for $8.00.

Jhndb 8y ago

In other news (2018): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42639479 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42639479

freehunter 8y ago
How are individually wrapped whole pickles still a real thing though?
- darkpuma 8y ago
  Those are bizarre, I bought one as a gag gift once. Maybe I'm part of the problem and those products survive off their novelty factor?

josefresco 8y ago

To be fair, other stores sell just ... tap water (no asparagus!) It may be good social media outrage fodder, but asparagus water is low on the list of insanely dumb things we buy.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

I cannot imagine when the product group was sitting around kicking out product ideas that this didn't make at least a few of them chuckle. I can imagine that at least a couple of them went home that night and, laughing, told their SO, "... and we're going to put asparagus in it and sell it for $6!!!" I mean, how could any normal person NOT laugh at this?

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
I can't wait for their cross promotion with GOOP, featuring homeopathic Gwyneth Paltrow pee.
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  If it's mixed in with Kombucha I'd probably buy it.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    I've only tried Kombucha once, but I'll admit I probably couldn't tell the difference.
CydeWeys 8y ago
There was no product group involved. This was made with the involvement of, at most, a handful of people at a single local store. Those bottles you see in the photo may well be the entire total number of these bottles that were ever made.
jorgesborges 8y ago
The label makers are sophisticated and simple enough to use that anybody working in the store could have made them. I think the "product group" in this case was a manager or employee dicking around in clever ways trying to increase sales for his or her department.

jorgesborges 8y ago

It's not impossible to imagine an established brand being successful with better packaging and marketing. But it's clearly just Joe from the produce department filling bottles with water and asparagus, haphazardly slapping a generic sticker on it, and calling it a day. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the lone initiative of a creative store manager who wasn't thinking too much or hard about it. I've seen equally egregious products at Starbucks.

jbob2000 8y ago
> clearly just Joe from the produce department filling bottles with water and asparagus Oh this is even better! You're telling me the asparagus water is hand-made? And Made in America? Bump that price to $10, this shit is gold! And fire Joe and replace him with Jane and then we can charge $15.

freehunter 8y ago

I don't get the controversy. Now, I would never buy asparagus water, but I also don't shop at Whole Foods. It's long been known that Whole Foods is historically a place that sells a lot of merchandise that is not necessary but is trendy, and they charge a premium for it. You could just as easily say that sparkling water is a mistake when you can get tap water and seltzer tablets for cheaper, or that Coca Cola is a mistake when you can get sugar and caramel and water and mix them yourself. Asparagus water sounds awful to me. But so does a lot of stuff that normal people buy, things that are not strictly necessary for survival but people like for some reason. This article is just "hey Whole Foods is expensive and trendy, has anyone noticed this?"

msla 8y ago
> This article is just "hey Whole Foods is expensive and trendy, has anyone noticed this?" The "controversy" was just Red Tribe scoring points on Blue Tribe, nothing more. (Never mind that putting Whole Foods in the Blue Tribe is pure stereotype, it's a well-known stereotype, and a potent one. Remember the hate Obama got for ordering arugula?)
- darkpuma 8y ago
  >Never mind that putting Whole Foods in the Blue Tribe is pure stereotype Who is doing that, other than you? The article is from the CBC, hardly some right wing rag..
giancarlostoro 8y ago
> You could just as easily say that sparkling water is a mistake when you can get tap water and seltzer tablets for cheaper, or that Coca Cola is a mistake when you can get sugar and caramel and water and mix them yourself. Not sure how you will get the coca / kola[0] taste in there though. Edit: fixed cocoa to coca/kola. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola#Coca_%E2%80%93_cocaine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola#Coca_%E2%80%93_cocai...
- will_brown 8y ago

avgDev 8y ago

I honestly did not understand the outrage with the asparagus water. Company makes a product, if someone is willing to buy it the company will continue to make it. If nobody buys it, company stops making it. Yes it was a weird decision, but people buy 'diamond' water (btw it dropped in price if you are interested, probably due to low demand)

throwaway5752 8y ago

If you think that's bad, there are people that don't vaccinate their kids on the intended schedule and others that demand antibiotics for viral infections. There are others that take new, $30k+ cars and use them to Uber not taking depreciation on their vehicle into account. This is may be easy to laugh at, but there are plenty of things that are much more stupid that people regularly do. edit: fine, downvote me. But if you actually read the article and look at the the reaction of people, you'd think that was in the top 100 stupid things that you could name off the top of your head. The fact that I'm even being downvoted as controversial for mentioning vaccines/antiobitic overprescription/unprofitable gig economy participation is much closer to a "fall of Rome" type behavior than a stupid item on the shelf at a grocery store. edit 2: here's a free example of much stupider behavior we take for granted: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autos-trucks-texas/huge-pricey-trucks-haul-jobs-and-profits-for-the-detroit-three-idUSKCN1PU1E4 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autos-trucks-texas/hu... (grossly oversized, inefficient trucks that causing poor strategic moves at US automakers as a result of trade protections for a specific class of vehicles... and I have nothing against pickup trucks, but these $70k luxury cars are the truck equivalent of $1k air jordans)

darkpuma 8y ago

Quirky products don't bother me. What bothers me more is fraudulent labeling of weights of store-packaged foods sold by weight (meats, etc). https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/06/whole-foods-under-fire-for-overcharging-customers/index.htm https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/06/whole-foods... Unfortunately this isn't uncommon in the grocery industry. Stores most often get tripped up when they sell something by the pound, package up nominal pounds of the stuff, then label each of those packages as precisely one pound when such precision is unlikely. Next time you're in the store take a look at the packages of ground beef; they'll say "$x per pound" and they should then also list a precise weight of that particular package with a price calculated for that particular package. Sometimes, not too infrequently, stores will cut corners and simply label each package as precisely one pound, with the error systematically in their favor. If you believe you've discovered a store doing this, you may be able to report that store for investigation by your local weights and measures: https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/dms/index.html https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/dms/index.html

ghostbrainalpha 8y ago

Asparagus water badly needed a new branded name... something like VitalitE Water. Its way to easy to change this headline to read "Whole Foods admits trying to sell AsparGROSS water for $6 was a mistake".