An Open Question: Whole Foods Markets and the City of the Mind

I live in Palo Alto, California, two blocks away from a Whole Foods Market. Safeway is at least 3 miles away. I make less than 15,000 dollars a year. Whole Foods is my downfall.

My first real experience with Whole Foods Market was not actually with a Whole Foods but with a Fresh Fields, which is owned by the same corporation as Whole Foods and differs only in that it has a different name. The Fresh Fields that I became briefly acquainted with was on P street in Washington D.C., where I lived for one semester of my senior year in college.

It was a great experience. My girlfriend and I lived on N Street in a studio that went for 1,035 dollars a month, which we rented from a man named Mr. Henry, a tall, black, almost effeminate man who was alternately very professional and drugged-out looking. One of our big events while living in D.C. was the weekly trip to Safeway, located about 8 blocks away. That particular Safeway was so great that people lined up all through the aisles, all the way back to the meat wall, in order to get checked out. We loved making the trek to the grocery store with our backpacks and our cloth bags, but it wasn't really that convenient.

Then, on about December 6th (about 10 days before we were moving) we started seeing signs that, a couple days before we left D.C., there was going to be a grand opening at the new Fresh Fields, two and a half blocks from our apartment. As you can imagine, we were both excited and saddened that we wouldn't be staying to enjoy this new Fresh Fields so near our home.

The grand opening of the P Street Fresh Fields was a smashing bellyaching success. When you walked in the sliding doors there were twelve Elvis impersonators singing to the customers, and you were greeted with a gift: a champagne glass etched with the Fresh Fields logo. Even more wonderful were the waitresses who filled up that same champagne glass with either red or white sparkling grape juice. It was tacky…but the night was filled with thousands of small rich hors d'oeuvres: salmon wrapped around dill sauce, perfect miniature steaks, Sonoma Chicken Salad, sushi, vegan chocolate cake, and non-dairy frozen dessert. Also pleasantly offered were tens of recipes on stiff 3 by 5 cards for my files.

It should be noted before I go on that I am not in any way opposed to Whole Foods, merely interested. Whole Foods, for those of you who don't know, is a grocery store where you can barely buy aspirin. It is the grocery store that has most succeeded in the health food/organic/trendsetting niche. The idea of Whole Foods brings up issues and questions which I won't answer, but which I will surely raise. One of these issues is intimated by the question of how we would feel if Whole Foods had 5000 stores worldwide instead of 128 stores nationwide. That is, how would we feel if a multi-national corporation was the main point of access to healthy organic food? Usually large corporations are notorious for poor environmental practices, but what if one wasn't? How would we, as liberals, react? Can we be environmentalists without being environmental justice workers?

Whole Foods Markets are, in some sense, always billed as community spaces. There are tables and chairs. The checkout counters are designed for pleasant communication, not necessarily speed. You can order coffee for here or to go, although they come both in a to-go cup. When you ask what the difference is, one of the pleasant check-out clerks will tell you that if you order a cup of coffee "for here" then you have to pay tax on it, whereas if you order it "to go" you don't.

This is definitely a planned community that you didn't plan. Is this your community's space, or a generic community space that can be shipped all over America? Is this a large company, or just your corner store? This issue is seen in the way Whole Foods' growth is phrased on their website:

"The fact that we are a company with a mission is very important to many of our investors."

"Mission" is a great way of saying "business plan," not that there's anything wrong with having a business plan. It's just that I live in Silicon Valley, and the valley didn't undulate to Himalayan heights with a business plan. But, I suppose a business plan is necessary for a grocery store. So what is their mission?

Their mission is, of course, wholeness, which brings to mind many traditional questions of consumerism and the purpose of life, such as: when are you whole? The food doesn't make you whole, you shit it right out. Consumers are always aching for goods that will make them whole, but they never do, and people continue aching to try. Is it possible that we don't recognize when we are whole? This issue is seen in the way Whole Foods' growth is phrased on their website: "Founded in 1980 as one small store in Austin, Texas, Whole Foods Market^® is now the world's largest retailer of natural and organic foods, with…128 stores across the country and the District of Columbia." It is not as if Whole Foods Market wasn't whole when it was one store, but then, we must ask, why did it need another 127 stores? The use of the word "organic" is especially interesting in this context for it suggests a certain form of growth which is viewed favorably. The questions are, again: When are we whole? When is Whole Foods whole? Does shopping at Whole Food make us whole?

My favorite thing about Whole Foods, however, is the samples. True, they aren't out before about 10:30 in the morning, and they are gone well before 10 at night, but they generally improve my life by notches and grooves of health. They're really nice because the samples change with the seasons of fruit, from pluots in September to blood oranges and honey tangerines in December to plums in late March. The samples at Whole Foods are some of the freshest in the city. I eat a couple of slices from the 12 or maybe even 15 trays of samples every day after work.

I figure that every work day I eat about 2 dollars of samples. Over a month this comes to 40 bucks, and over a full year this comes to 480 dollars. So, if I eat samples from Whole Foods every workday, I'm making about 500 dollars off of them each year. Of course, there are vacations and sickdays and days that I just really don't feel like taking this time to walk in there, but you get the drift. Now, my real question is: does this mean that I should spend 500 dollars there each year? Or that I can? Or that I should still not spend any money there under any circumstances? The answers to these questions are , of course, very personal and get at one's financial and moral core.

It is, of course, far too expensive. This is part of its charm. But again, there are aspects we miss when we generalize. Whole Foods generic brand 365 is, in most cases, a great value. At $ 3.29 for 20 bags of Organic Breakfast Tea (oftentimes $2.99 on sale), you get a serviceable cup of rich tea that, although is not as round and haunting as a more expensive cup, is organic. The 365 brand soy milk goes for $.99 a liter, a full $.60 cheaper than the leading brand. And $1.19 is certainly a bit more than you'd pay for a dozen eggs at Safeway, but I'm willing to pay those $.20 or so for locally produced Clover Storneta eggs. In fact, I'm probably willing to pay those 20 extra cents to support a market such as Whole Foods that supports the business of organic food.

Similarly, a gallon of Clover Storneta fat free milk runs $ 2.89, which is only a few more cents than the Lucerne brand at Safeway, but it's locally produced at 17 family dairies and does not contain the growth hormone rBST. I'm willing to pay a little more for that.

So, is it another typical corporation using clever marketing to spin its way into your pocketbook, or is it sincerely trying to make life better, healthier, more equitable, more sociable, more sustainable? Will it eventually buy out Safeway and save the Earth, or is it just another boutique for the hip and earnest? Go to one and cruise the aisles with an open mind and a skeptical purse. The question is still open.

See the Whole Foods Markets website at http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com

Francis Raven

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