Whole Foods Market

[Mimi Sheraton]

Considering all of the conventional products sold at Whole Food Markets, I have been wondering what the name of the market really means. Nothing is cut up? Hardly. I have yet to see anyone carrying out a whole calf or pig. Not refined?

But many products there are. Certainly not all organic as that distinction is made where applicable. Or does it mean that these markets offer an entire array of food..meat, fish, cheese, vegetables, pastry, etc. as in "That's a whole market of food."

I believe it is a cleverly devised halo term meant to cast a glow of sanctitity over all products sold within although you can get at least half of the stuff at Food Emporium or D'Agostino.

Any thoughts? Anyone have access to Whole Food Market PR department?

It would be great to hear that answer from down Austin way.

[Kent Wang]

I believe it is a cleverly devised halo term meant to cast a glow of sanctitity over all products sold within although you can get at least half of the stuff at Food Emporium or D'Agostino.

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I think you are right. If you've ever been to the Whole Foods flagship store in Austin you will get full dose of their Whole propaganda. Some people like it, I find it disgusting. Maybe I will go later today and take some pictures. You know, they even have a skating rink on the roof! How ridiculous for a city as hot as Austin.

[MarketStEl]

I certainly don't have a pipeline to the Whole Foods Markets PR department, but we all have access to the company's Web site...

which really isn't all that helpful when it comes to answering the question, "Just what exactly do you mean by 'whole foods'?"

But it is clear enough on this: They do not carry any products containing artificial ingredients. The Quality Standards section of their Web site has a link to a list of ingredients WFM deems unacceptable. That list explains why you will find Tropicana orange juice (no additives) and Philadelphia Brand cream cheese (carageenan, a stabilizer and thickener, is a natural product derived from seaweed), but not Hellman's mayonnaise (contains calcium disodium EDTA, a banned ingredient, as a preservative), at Whole Foods stores.

So if by "whole", the company means "unadulterated" -- that is, containing only natural ingredients with nothing artificial -- then you have the answer to your question.

Many well-known brands--I've given two above--meet this standard, but others do not. Some other examples:

• Most commercial brands of canned tomatoes would meet WFM's standards. Del Monte canned tomatoes, for instance, contain only calcium chloride (a natural salt) and high fructose corn syrup (a substance some people have trouble with, but not an artificial ingredient) and thus could be sold in WFM stores.

• WFM stores could stock Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, but not Heinz, which contains sodium benzoate as a preservative and polysorbate 80. L&P uses no artificial ingredients.

I think this sheds some light on the subject.

[JohnL]

You are on to something here.

Interestingly, there is a Whole Foods next door to me. I shopped there regularly for a while and now, I find myself going back to the local D'Ag most of the time.

(I also "travel" to Citarella as often as I go next door to Wholefoods).

Why?

I haven't thought about it much (your post is cause for some reflection on my behaviour).

I can say that Wholefoods has caused local supermarkets to "adjust" their inventories. (competition?)

I can also say that I am not gullible enough to believe that the very term "Whole Foods" as used by the market means anything significant. I also believe that while there is a large selection of items (vertically and horizontally) at Wholefoods there is much mediocrity. I prefer to shop for food in a smaller place where there is a higher percentage of higher quality items rather than "wade through" a massive inventory.

There are also curiosities at Wholefoods. The choice of organic and non organic items. (I just want good). Also it seems that Wholefoods (big as it is) doesn't offer some items like Boston lettuce on a regualr basis (local supermarkets do)--it is even more frustrating when a place offers two hundred kinds of lettuces but not the one you want.

Anyway--it seems that I can find most everything I want at the D'Ag and the Korean market on the corner, for something special (or rare) I weigh the longer walk to Citarella vs the trip next door to Wholefoods.

[bleachboy]

I'm not sure why the word "whole" was chosen, but I have always understood "whole foods" (as in the "whole foods movement") to mean "natural foods".

[MarketStEl]

You are on to something here.

Interestingly, there is a Whole Foods next door to me. I shopped there regularly for a while and now, I find myself going back to the local D'Ag most of the time.

(I also "travel" to Citarella as often as I go next door to Wholefoods).

Why?

I haven't thought about it much (your post is cause for some reflection on my behaviour).

If you look over on the Pennsylvania board, you will probably find a post or two from me that notes that my two "neighborhood" supermarkets are a Super Fresh (A&P family, like Food Emporium) and a Whole Foods, which are located across the street from each other.

I've never been disappointed with anything I've bought from Whole Foods, but I do the overwhelming bulk of my shopping at the Super Fresh (and at an Acme about a mile further south), and I can tell you why in one word: Price.

The funny thing is, when it comes to regular prices on products both stores carry, WFM is not all that out of line with the competition. However, the regular supermarket runs much better specials on these products. That also applies for natural and organic products--the Super Fresh is running a very good special on Del Monte's new line of organic canned tomatoes this week; I've never seen Muir Glen priced that low at Whole Foods.

I can say that Wholefoods has caused local supermarkets to "adjust" their inventories. (competition?)

Yes, it has. That is very evident at the aforementioned Super Fresh, which increased the number of natural food products it carries and grouped most of them together in one section of the store.

There are also curiosities at Wholefoods. The choice of organic and non organic items. (I just want good). Also it seems that Wholefoods (big as it is) doesn't offer some items like Boston lettuce on a regualr basis (local supermarkets do)--it is even more frustrating when a place offers two hundred kinds of lettuces but not the one you want.

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The Whole Foods on South Street does carry Boston lettuce regularly. That the store near you does not may have something to do with its produce suppliers and where they get their products. WFM does prefer to carry produce grown as close to the store's location as possible whenever possible, which is why you will find lots of Pennsylvania and Maryland grown produce on South Street. (Take a look at the labels in the WFM next door to you and see what states dominate where such information is provided.)

This probably should not be an issue with lettuce, as most of the lettuce Americans eat is grown in California. But there are local growers of Romaine, for instance, and Boston lettuce is often grown hydroponically; there is a large hydroponic grower of Boston lettuce in Chester County, IIRC, and it may supply WFM stores in this region.

[TAPrice]

Considering all of the conventional products sold at Whole Food Markets, I have been wondering what the name of the market really means.

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I always heard that it started in Austin as more of a hippy, health-food store. As they expanded, they wisely shifted to serving gourmet and upper-class taste but kept the attitude. The pharmacy section still clings to this hippy mentaility. It's a winning formula. Just wait, though, some day Austin's other glorious chain, Central Market, will reach the East Coast. That place is all about gourmet without the attitude.

Of course, this main not be the true story, but it's what someone from Austin told me.

[Mimi Sheraton]

You are on to something here.

Interestingly, there is a Whole Foods next door to me. I shopped there regularly for a while and now, I find myself going back to the local D'Ag most of the time.

(I also "travel" to Citarella as often as I go next door to Wholefoods).

Why?

I haven't thought about it much (your post is cause for some reflection on my behaviour).

If you look over on the Pennsylvania board, you will probably find a post or two from me that notes that my two "neighborhood" supermarkets are a Super Fresh (A&P family, like Food Emporium) and a Whole Foods, which are located across the street from each other.

I've never been disappointed with anything I've bought from Whole Foods, but I do the overwhelming bulk of my shopping at the Super Fresh (and at an Acme about a mile further south), and I can tell you why in one word: Price.

The funny thing is, when it comes to regular prices on products both stores carry, WFM is not all that out of line with the competition. However, the regular supermarket runs much better specials on these products. That also applies for natural and organic products--the Super Fresh is running a very good special on Del Monte's new line of organic canned tomatoes this week; I've never seen Muir Glen priced that low at Whole Foods.

I can say that Wholefoods has caused local supermarkets to "adjust" their inventories. (competition?)

Yes, it has. That is very evident at the aforementioned Super Fresh, which increased the number of natural food products it carries and grouped most of them together in one section of the store.

There are also curiosities at Wholefoods. The choice of organic and non organic items. (I just want good). Also it seems that Wholefoods (big as it is) doesn't offer some items like Boston lettuce on a regualr basis (local supermarkets do)--it is even more frustrating when a place offers two hundred kinds of lettuces but not the one you want.

←

The Whole Foods on South Street does carry Boston lettuce regularly. That the store near you does not may have something to do with its produce suppliers and where they get their products. WFM does prefer to carry produce grown as close to the store's location as possible whenever possible, which is why you will find lots of Pennsylvania and Maryland grown produce on South Street. (Take a look at the labels in the WFM next door to you and see what states dominate where such information is provided.)

This probably should not be an issue with lettuce, as most of the lettuce Americans eat is grown in California. But there are local growers of Romaine, for instance, and Boston lettuce is often grown hydroponically; there is a large hydroponic grower of Boston lettuce in Chester County, IIRC, and it may supply WFM stores in this region.

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I have been disappointed at all prepared foods I bought at Whole Foods and generally awful pre-sliced smoked salmon at a high price both in NY and in Evanston, Ill. As for fish, I don't think WF's compares in freshness to Citarella tho better than most supermarkets. In addition, I have found the help in fish and meat departments sadly lacking in expertise, both in the Time-Warner Center and on 7th Ave & 25th Street in Manhattan.

[jsolomon]

Whole Foods means This is your average grocery bill for 3-days' worth of food.

[Kent Wang]

I always heard that it started in Austin as more of a hippy, health-food store. As they expanded, they wisely shifted to serving gourmet and upper-class taste but kept the attitude. The pharmacy section still clings to this hippy mentaility. It's a winning formula. Just wait, though, some day Austin's other glorious chain, Central Market, will reach the East Coast. That place is all about gourmet without the attitude.

Of course, this main not be the true story, but it's what someone from Austin told me.

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Very very true. Ask around on the Texas forums and everybody will agree. The Whole Foods flagship is by far the biggest grocery store I have ever been in, about the size of a Sam's Club, but I'd still rather shop at the smaller Central Market. Central Market is indeed more about quality and less about "wholeness". Sadly it will be very many years before Central Market ever expands outside of Texas, as its parent company HEB has chosen to stay within Texas (and Louisiana now, I think) for the time being.

[MarketStEl]

I think we could consider Bleachboy's answer to the question the definitive one on the subject. To provide further confirmation, here are some web sites for other stores that feature "whole foods":

Whole Foods Cooperative, Erie, Pa.

Whole Foods Co-op, Duluth, Minn.

Rainbow Whole Foods Co-operative Grocery, Jackson, Miss.

Roanoke Natural Foods Co-op, Roanoke, Va.

And there are other variations on this theme, including retailers of supplements, that popped up when I Asked Jeeves "What are whole foods?"

A bunch of sites dealing with Whole Foods Market, of course, also popped up, including sites pertaining to the ongoing drive to unionize the famously anti-union company. But perhaps more pertinent to Mimi's original question was an article from Forbes that also showed up in the search. Leave it to the business writers to get to the crux of the matter:

Food Porn*

*Yes, the same title as that much-discussed Columbia Journalism Review article on food writing.

BTW, I popped into the South Street Whole Foods just a little while ago after picking up a few items at the Super Fresh. I scoped out the produce section, which is the most eye-popping produce section in any Philadelphia supermarket I've yet encountered. The same goes for the prices.

This time of year, you won't find any locally grown produce at WFM--it's all California or from abroad.

Conventionally grown Spanish on-the-vine tomatoes were $3.29 a pound.

Spanish onions, $1.79 a pound.

And yes, they had Bibb (Boston) lettuce--organically grown, from California, at $2.39 a head.

I think I'll continue my habit of buying most of my produce at the Reading Terminal Market, with occasional forays to the Italian Market for bargains.

[Mottmott]

The only food I buy with any regularity at WF is meat which they claim is free of antibiotics and hormones. The only alternative is the mostly frozen meat at the farmers' markets. Otherwise, in Philadelphia, I find everything else I need better and cheaper at a neighborhood coop, the Reading Terminal Market, 9th St market, and, in milder weather, the farmers' markets.

I think they use the patina of a market that sells organic foods and subscribes to the natural or whole foods concept as a mask to charge more for the conventional produce which seems to be most of what they sell. Their fish counter smells fishy to me. And cheese in plastic wrap? Puh-lez.

I know people who shop there because it makes them feel good to be the kind of people who shop there instead of old-fashioned supermarkets, but seldom scratch cook.

[Carrot Top]

Roanoke Natural Foods Co-op, Roanoke, Va.

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Roanoke Natural Foods is the closest thing to a Whole Foods this area has but it is an entirely different animal.

It is a smallish-to-medium size "Health Food" store that gave itself a new paint job and hired an designer and some help that do not look as if they will keel over any moment from malnutrition or long-term unhappiness as is common in most health food stores. The selection is not huge but they do have a "deli counter" that offers some ready-made things and hot herbal teas with a tiny brown rice cracker or two to sip while you ponder the six-dollar bite of cheese you might indulge in.

Whole Foods Market (aka "Whole Paycheck") goes the extra ten miles or so beyond a dolled up natural foods market in all ways.

Big-time corporate. Copywriters hired to write job descriptions for the cashiers and that sort of thing.

Dreadful and exciting all at the same time. Va va voom.

How we do all want to be Whole. In our Foods. At our Markets.

Damn the prices. Sell the first-born. All kids do is eat, anyway.

[Pontormo]

Whole Foods appears frequently in discussions on eGullet, usually as a target for many reasons that include price and varying quality of offerings. It attracts a considerable amount of flack because it has grown from scruffy, food co-op style origins to a corporation that resembles Starbucks in its wanton desire to swallow up all the competition in new markets it enters, recasting everything in its own image. Somehow, that seems hypocritcal, betraying the spirit in which the store began.

The major factors in the company's favor relate to workers: the benefits, salaries and stock options are superior to those offered to most of their peers. I have heard workers glow about their jobs, though certainly there is dissent, too.

I know I've done my share of griping and will continue to do so. In response to the original post in this thread, one of my major complaints is a dogged resistance to anything WF considers unheathful, or not natural, especially when it comes to preservatives. This principle seems more important than superior quality, to me at least. Whole Foods would disagree.

I have grown less militant when it comes to preservatives in meat, for example. I may favor a brand of bacon made with pork that I can find at WF that has no sodium nitrates and a lesser degree of fat, etc. Yet, I don't really care what keeps pancetta from rapid spoilage as long as it is good authentic stuff imported from Italy. WF carries imported prosciutto (one kind only), but "all natural" pancetta in flat, thin slices that are packaged like bacon somewhere in the U.S. It's more expensive than the real thing. No thank you.

I miss the Israeli feta I used to get at Whole Foods, but the item was discontinued when the cheesemakers refused to honor the company's policy regarding preservatives.

Because the company is based in Texas, the central warehouse of shipped goods has a greater influence on what one can find in the produce aisle than local farms do.

Recently WF became aware of its self-image in this respect and has begun posting signs advertising what is grown locally. "We love the family farm" is the message. Still, from May through November, I spend very little money at WF, and shop at the farmers market, grateful that it's there.

That farmers market is a privilege. So is the bounty of choices New Yorkers, D.C residents and other large-city dwellers have in many places this far from California where most of the produce at Safeway would do cartwheels easily over the likes of the stuff at the WF I visit each week.

Whole Foods probably is a g-d send to folks who don't have Asian grocery stores or the kinds of markets that are being photographed on John Whiting's current food blog.

I know a friend in a small town in Maine would like something like WF because her local farmers don't grow exotic greens like arugula or black kale or heirloom tomatoes or golden beets. Her natural foods store is small, even if its whole wheat loaves are good. The large supermarket, not a chain, has aged, imported Gruyere....now. Usually, she needs to drive to Portland or Boston for anything "unusual."

WF suffers from a lack of competition since Wild Oats never grew the way it did. Wegmans seems to be offering this...though I have not yet seen its effects. Already, though, the pretensions of that store are being tallied.

Edited January 12, 2006 by Pontormo (log)

[Patrick S]

The only food I buy with any regularity at WF is meat which they claim is free of antibiotics and hormones.

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I hope they're not actually claiming that their beef is "hormone-free," because that would be clearly false. They can say that their beef came from cows that did not recieve hormone supplements, and that would be true, but all beef contains hormones, and the hormone levels in the beef are pretty much the same whether it came from cows that were or were not given growth-promoting hormone implants.

Regarding the original topic, I am glad to have WF in my town, simply because they carry some things there that other stores don't. But like you Mottmott, I never buy my basic ingredients there.

[foodgeek]

I shop at the WF is Arlongton, Va, and they are best of the easily accesible options for fish. They have my business from that alone but they have a good meat department as well. Their appetizing case sometimes has interesting items. Their bakery dept is good as well. I'm just not seeing a downside to shopping their as long as I look at the prices carefully when shopping for produce.

Plus, a lot of items taht I like are carried by WF but not by mainstream supermarkets.

I see a lot of people are attacking them on price but I find their house brand to be good value and quality on a lot of items. Mainly the produce prices seem out of line, but justifiable based on sourcing and quality.

I know that they don't carry items with hydrogenalized soy...but that is fine with me.

[MarketStEl]

The major factors in the company's favor relate to workers: the benefits, salaries and stock options are superior to those offered to most of their peers.  I have heard workers glow about their jobs, though certainly there is dissent, too.

This is one area where I don't quite get the flak. Sure, every organization is going to have its share of people who do not like their work or their working conditions, but there seems to be some deep-seated skepticism underlying WFM's critics on this issue--a sense that the top brass can't be serious about their approach to labor relations. This is not to say that companies never use a collaborative approach as window dressing for a top-down imposition of management's will or worse, but I do sense that WFM is not simply blowing smoke through its hat when it talks about its management style and values. Or is making mad profit prima facie evidence that they can't be serious about this stuff?

I know I've done my share of griping and will continue to do so.  In response to the original post in this thread, one of my major complaints is a dogged resistance to anything WF considers unheathful, or not natural, especially when it comes to preservatives.  This principle seems more important than superior quality, to me at least.  Whole Foods would disagree.

I have grown less militant when it comes to preservatives in meat, for example.  I may favor a brand of bacon made with pork that I can find at WF that has no sodium nitrates and a lesser degree of fat, etc.  Yet, I don't really care what keeps pancetta from rapid spoilage as long as it is good authentic stuff imported from Italy.  WF carries imported prosciutto (one kind only), but "all natural" pancetta in flat, thin slices that are packaged like bacon somewhere in the U.S.  It's more expensive than the real thing.  No thank you.

I miss the Israeli feta I used to get at Whole Foods, but the item was discontinued when the cheesemakers refused to honor the company's policy regarding preservatives.

I didn't quite follow you on this passage, although your last paragraph sort of straightened things out. I take it you're saying you disagree with WFM's "absolutely no preservatives" policy?

That's all right--and I hate to sound like a marketing consultant here--but if WFM is to remain at all true to its roots and not simply throw in the towel and morph into a larger version of Dean & DeLuca or DiBruno's or (insert name of favorite fancy food emporium in your locality here, if such a creature exists), it must continue to adhere to some basic tenets of the "whole foods" movement and philosophy. I'm sure that their willingness to sell conventionally grown produce that has been treated with pesticides is considered corruption enough by some.

Because the company is based in Texas, the central warehouse of shipped goods has a greater influence on what one can find in the produce aisle than local farms do. 

Then why, in season, do I see a fairly high number of "Pennsylvania Grown," "New Jersey Grown," "Delaware Grown" and "Maryland Grown" signs in their produce section of the South Street store, and have ever since the day it opened in 1999? How much autonomy does WFM give its regional produce buyers? (WFM stores in the Greater Philadelphia and Washington/Baltimore markets became part of the family through the company's acquisition of Fresh Fields, a Maryland-based natural grocer that began operations in the early 1980s. The chain's stores took the family name in 2000.)

Recently WF became aware of its self-image in this respect and has begun posting signs advertising what is grown locally.  "We love the family farm"  is the message.  Still, from May through November, I spend very little money at WF, and shop at the farmers market, grateful that it's there.

That farmers market is a privilege.  So is the bounty of choices New Yorkers, D.C residents and other large-city dwellers have in many places this far from California where most of the produce at Safeway would do cartwheels easily over the likes of the stuff at the WF I visit each week.

I assume you are referring to Safeway stores in California, not Safeway/Genuardi's stores in DC/Philly?

Thank God for Lancaster County. I just hope the tourists don't completely pave it over.

Whole Foods probably is a g-d send to folks who don't have Asian grocery stores or the kinds of markets that are being photographed on John Whiting's current food blog.

I know a friend in a small town in Maine would like something like WF because her local farmers don't grow exotic greens like arugula or black kale or heirloom tomatoes or golden beets.  Her natural foods store is small, even if its whole wheat loaves are good.  The large supermarket, not a chain, has aged, imported Gruyere....now.  Usually, she needs to drive to Portland or Boston for anything "unusual."

I think we've seen this sentiment expressed on both this thread and others dealing with WFM.

But if you will pardon me for going into my "the fundamental division in the US is not red-state/blue-state, it's urban/rural" file, small towns like the one in Maine you mention above are probably the last places WFM will set up shop. Not enough people with major bucks to blow on fancy food. Pardon my bogeyman drift, but the reason Wal-Mart grew into America's largest retailer so quickly is because for most of the company's first two decades or so of existence, it focused exclusively on the small towns of the Heartland and Deep South, where discount department stores had not bothered to venture, figuring people in these modest communities would appreciate a store with a large selection of low-priced merchandise. They were right. And so is WFM for not opening stores in these same places; the business justification is the mirror image of Wal-Mart's.

WF suffers from a lack of competition since Wild Oats never grew the way it did. Wegmans seems to be offering this...though I have not yet seen its effects.  Already, though, the pretensions of that store are being tallied.

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Let's face it--food porn rules. "I am Whole Foods of Borg. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated."

[JohnL]

You are on to something here.

Interestingly, there is a Whole Foods next door to me. I shopped there regularly for a while and now, I find myself going back to the local D'Ag most of the time.

(I also "travel" to Citarella as often as I go next door to Wholefoods).

Why?

I haven't thought about it much (your post is cause for some reflection on my behaviour).

If you look over on the Pennsylvania board, you will probably find a post or two from me that notes that my two "neighborhood" supermarkets are a Super Fresh (A&P family, like Food Emporium) and a Whole Foods, which are located across the street from each other.

I've never been disappointed with anything I've bought from Whole Foods, but I do the overwhelming bulk of my shopping at the Super Fresh (and at an Acme about a mile further south), and I can tell you why in one word: Price.

The funny thing is, when it comes to regular prices on products both stores carry, WFM is not all that out of line with the competition. However, the regular supermarket runs much better specials on these products. That also applies for natural and organic products--the Super Fresh is running a very good special on Del Monte's new line of organic canned tomatoes this week; I've never seen Muir Glen priced that low at Whole Foods.

I can say that Wholefoods has caused local supermarkets to "adjust" their inventories. (competition?)

Yes, it has. That is very evident at the aforementioned Super Fresh, which increased the number of natural food products it carries and grouped most of them together in one section of the store.

There are also curiosities at Wholefoods. The choice of organic and non organic items. (I just want good). Also it seems that Wholefoods (big as it is) doesn't offer some items like Boston lettuce on a regualr basis (local supermarkets do)--it is even more frustrating when a place offers two hundred kinds of lettuces but not the one you want.

←

The Whole Foods on South Street does carry Boston lettuce regularly. That the store near you does not may have something to do with its produce suppliers and where they get their products. WFM does prefer to carry produce grown as close to the store's location as possible whenever possible, which is why you will find lots of Pennsylvania and Maryland grown produce on South Street. (Take a look at the labels in the WFM next door to you and see what states dominate where such information is provided.)

This probably should not be an issue with lettuce, as most of the lettuce Americans eat is grown in California. But there are local growers of Romaine, for instance, and Boston lettuce is often grown hydroponically; there is a large hydroponic grower of Boston lettuce in Chester County, IIRC, and it may supply WFM stores in this region.

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I have been disappointed at all prepared foods I bought at Whole Foods and generally awful pre-sliced smoked salmon at a high price both in NY and in Evanston, Ill. As for fish, I don't think WF's compares in freshness to Citarella tho better than most supermarkets. In addition, I have found the help in fish and meat departments sadly lacking in expertise, both in the Time-Warner Center and on 7th Ave & 25th Street in Manhattan.

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I agree--the prepared foods are mediocree at best. They are also IMOP often not reasonably priced.

Fish is better at WF than most supermarkets (this is the main complaint I have about supermarkets--fish and to a lesser degree, meats). Citarella does fish very well (thewy are known for this).

also at WF the quality of help in most departments is not as good as it should be (especially fish and meats where one really benefits from 'expert" butchers and fishmongers.)

[Bux]

Considering all of the conventional products sold at Whole Food Markets, I have been wondering what the name of the market really means. . . . .

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Good question, and whether we like the shop, or the organization, whether we hate it, or like myself, we simply regard it as another source good for certain foods, is irrelevant to the question. For the record I shop there regularly, but have learned to simply bypass many of the aisles. My daughter buys more food there in the hope of reducing the additives in her son's diet. I've found the help friendly, but as Mimi notes, not terribly informed. I most often shop at the Fourteenth Street store in Manhattan, and as it's across the street from the Union Square greenmarket, I don't think about buying fish. It's not going to be as fresh as at the greenmarket fishmonger or as inexpensive as in Chinatown,

I think Sandy pretty well nailed it in his first response. Bleachboy may have summed it up more succinctly. Truthfully, and I don't care if the name was thought up by a bunch of zonked hippies or a corporate think tank, I think the implication and connotation of "whole" was probably more important than any "real" meaning. I think we can trace this use of "whole" back at least as far as the Whole Earth Catalog, although that may predate most members. In that context, I think it brings a connotation of "whole" as "universal," implying a kind of control or Renaissance empowerment. We are at the center of the world that provides our diet and we can control what we eat. But also as Sandy says, the food is whole, not in the sense that nothing is missing, but in the sense that nothing undesirable has been added. Language is not science and it's particularly not mathematics. It's not unusual for a word to mean the opposite of what it used to mean or what its face value seems to be.

As much as anything else, I suspect the kind of thinking that assumed consumers would finish "whole" as "wholesome" in their minds.

[Mimi Sheraton]

Whole Foods biggest benefit in NYC has been the openings in areas where there are no other supermarkets and so, naturally, they are welcome. The only one I can think of that has a supermkt nearby is Union Sq. where there is also a Food Emporium on Union Sq. West and 14th St. But there is no other market near E. Houston Street where WF will soon open, or near 7th Ave & 25th, or near AOL and Columbus Circle...To those of us who have other options, WF is a marginal choice at best.

[JohnL]

Whole Foods biggest benefit in NYC has been the openings in areas where there are no other supermarkets and so, naturally, they are welcome. The only one I can think of that has a supermkt nearby is Union Sq. where there is also a Food Emporium on Union Sq. West and 14th St.  But there is no other market near E. Houston Street where WF will soon open, or near 7th Ave & 25th, or near AOL and Columbus Circle...To those of us who have other options, WF is a marginal choice at best.

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There are supermarkets near the TW Center WF.

DAG on 57th Street and there is a market on Ninth and 58th (the name escapes me at the moment).

One benefit is--the local markets have definitely improved the quality, variety and freshness of their offerings.

To me WF is a definite level below operations like Citarella (my main problem with WF here is that their prices don't compare well enough and the expertise of the staff is not even close as well as the fact that the WF prepared foods also do not compete well).

I believe that one thing WF has going for it to a degree, is it's "scene."

The real test will be --will NYers stick with WF over the long haul in the face of "adjustment" of the competition?

(interestingly, I belive even Citarella and Zabars and Fairway have made some subtle adjustments --I just can't put my finger on em.

[Pan]

There's a sizeable Key Food at 4th and A, which isn't that far from that huge building between Chrystie and Bowery on Houston; isn't that where the Whole Foods will be?

I think Whole Foods, even in New York, has a niche market. I know people (well, at least one person) who live(s) nowhere near Columbus Circle, yet go(es) to the Whole Foods there to shop. Why? That I couldn't say, though in that one person's case, it has something to do with going to a gym near there, I guess. Still, that's not the only thing: She thinks the store is great.

Edited January 13, 2006 by Pan (log)

[Richard Kilgore]

I have shopped at Whole Foods since they opened their first store in Austin, and at the predecessors of that store before then. I do a small but important percentage of my shopping at one of the stores these days, and the rest at a mainline grocery store, Central Market, a Vietnamese Market and a Carceneria/Produceria/Taqueria.

WF is often referred to here as Whole Paycheck. The prices for many items that are available also in a mainline grocery store are usually noticeably higher, or so it appears to me and not a few others.

A look at the Whole Foods history on their website is interesting. I am quite sure the name is a riff on "wholesome".

[fyfas]

Completely agree with Ms. Sheraton's premise (the "halo" effect) and with the comment about the prepared foods; utterly tasteless across the board.

Must note, however, that once one is away from the more competitive markets/areas - read "bigger cities", the arrival of a Whole Foods is a godsend. When the only other places to shop are an Albertson's or a Smith's (part of Kroger), other than an occasional wince at Whole Foods' prices one is quite happy for the much fresher produce and much fresher seafood. Selection, too, in these departments are great improvements.

Oh, to have a Citarella or a Food Emporium; to have a Murray's Cheese Shop...

Edited January 14, 2006 by fyfas (log)

[MarketStEl]

Oh, to have a Citarella or a Food Emporium; to have a Murray's Cheese Shop...

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How about a Reading Terminal Market?

--Sandy, friend of the general manager