I’m not endorsing Whole Foods, but here’s a coupon so they don’t rip you off as much as they would if you didn’t have the coupon. I used to love Whole Foods when I lived in Chicago. And I was really really excited about them coming to Hawaii. I mean really excited. But the first time I shopped there, I found their prices exorbitant. Granola that I can get at Umeke for $2.89 a pound was almost $6 a pound there! My salad came to $10! Evan’s sliver of pizza was $4! Things were not cheap.
I’m glad they are making organic, whole foods more mainstream and accessible to the public who wouldn’t be caught dead in a health food store, but honestly I’d rather shop in the smaller health food stores that are losing business to Whole Foods. So I shop at Umeke Market, Huckleberry Farms, Kokua Market, and Down to Earth with the hopes that my few dollars here and there go to support the little guys so they don’t get swallowed up in the Whole Foods hype. And I do think it’s just hype. I wonder if they will do well here in the long term.
Here’s something I read about Whole Foods that sums it up: “The Whole Foods business model is more or less the standard stuff of Fortune 500 ambition. This is a vision of mega-chain retailing that involves strategic swallowing up (or driving out of business) of smaller retail competitors. It is a business model that objectively complements the long-term industrialization of organics (that is, large-scale corporate farms) over small family farms. It is also a vision in which concerns about social responsibility do not necessarily apply where less publicly visible company suppliers are concerned. Subsidiaries of cigarette manufacturers (for example, Altria, owner of Kraft's organic products) or low-wage exploiters of minority workers (such as California Bottling Co., Inc., makers of Whole Foods's private-label water) are apparently welcome partners in this particular eco-corporate version of ‘the sustainable future.’”
