As noted, WF does carry products from under the very same corporate umbrella as Frito-Lay. Also for the record, Annie’s Homegrown, though genuinely born in the home kitchen of a woman named Annie, now has revenue in the ~$200 million range, is the second-largest producer of boxed macaroni-and-cheese after Kraft, and has been bought by General Mills. You’ll notice some other popular WF-sold brands under that umbrella.
Look, Whole Foods is a large corporation that principally sells the products of other large corporations. Some of these corporations have superior business ethics, by various standards, but the decision to shop at WF (if you do) should really be about the products themselves.
I happen to agree with most of their product standards. There’s money now in actually selling healthier products, too.
I can get those products from the co-op cheaper. And don’t have to buy from a guy who was slapped on the wrist for manipulating his own stock or has a stated business goal to put my local non-profit coop out of business. Fortunately, I live in a part of the country with lots of non-profit coops - and some very good grocers with a good selection of a variety of foods.
And yes, he has to carry some of the same products - often because they’ve been bought by huge conglomerates. But he hasn’t been happy about it. His business practices in relation to his small suppliers is WalMartian. I’m always amused by people who won’t shop at WalMart (I do occasionally) but will shop at Whole Foods.
As a person who’s grown strawberries the issue of taste has nothing to do with organic or not. It has to do with climate, soil conditions, and growing methods.
For example a strawberry grown in a cooler climate that gets alot of sun but not much heat is going to grow slower but man, do they taste good. Whereas a strawberry from say Texas where its hot grows faster and the growing season is longer and more profitable but the strawberries have much less flavor.
So yea, a strawberry grown in a local greenhouse or in special conditions probably would taste better than strawberries bought from a store and brought in from Texas or even California. The difference though is price and year-around availability.
Now finally another difference - gardening and farming are NOT the same. Yes sure someone might be able to grow awesome strawberries or tomatoes in there backyard and do not need to use chemical fertilizers and get by just using organic mulch or compost. But they working with a much smaller area and arent trying to make a living off them. Whereas a commercial strawberry grower working 100 acres and trying to make a profit has to use artificial chemical fertilizers.
At our new local WalMart grocery store which opened right across the street from a Whole Foods, they are trying to mimic the feel and even the smell of WF to try and compete.
Another, I used to despise WF, not because of price and all, but because at one time it seemed like they didnt had such limited food selection in the store. It seems like half the store was junk like videos, candles, nick-nacks, incense, tshirts, books, artwork and such. Hey, I go into a grocery store to buy FOOD! For food their might be one brand of say pinto beans - take it or leave it.
Luckily and with increased competition in the organic sector from normal grocery stores they had to change all that and they expanded their grocery selections.
I’ve heard about those and they sound pretty good.
Questions: How many members in your coop?
Since you are essentially buying a product do you pay sales tax on your membership?
Also has there ever been a time when the farmers crops simply were not doing well and the members got nothing or very little?
I’m in a farm share of a farm in Long Island that serves 10 or 12 communities in NYC. If I had to estimate, the number of members is in the thousands.
We don’t pay sales tax or, if we do its rolled into the flat fee so I’ve never noticed. State laws may vary.
Yes, when a crop fails you share the failure. My farmer stopped even attempting corn because it failed three years in a row. However, it would be ridiculous for a farmer to only be growing one thing at a time – usually conditions that are bad for one thing, are good for another. We had a year when the winter squash rotted on the vines due to rain. I think we got one butternut squash for the whole season. However those same conditions were amazing for sweet potato. We had sweet potato out the wazoo. Note that each week we receive 7-10 different items. You never get a box of just one thing, so it would never happen that you don’t get anything in a particular week.
Also, our farmer (and I think this is common practice) favors his farm share members over his farm stand. If there is only a little bit of a crop, he will make sure the members have first crack, even though he could get more money for certain produce at his farm stand.
It’s not the fact that they come from a conglomerate, it’s the fact that something like Pepsi is mass-market, and therefore not able to be differentiated from the products sold by their competition. If they’re not differentiated, they can’t charge more for them.
Basic business strategy 101- you compete on price, or you differentiate.
Whole Foods doesn’t want to compete on price at all- they want to sell unique-ish versions of everything, and charge top dollar. In other words, if they sold Pepsi, their prices would have to be in line with what other retailers nearby sell Pepsi for, or people will simply buy it there. By selling Izze or Virgil’s Root Beer or their own 360 brand, they differentiate themselves from the competition, and therefore can charge more.
It doesn’t go over well with consumers if you explicitly point out that you’re selling substitute products for much higher prices, so you make a big marketing point about the organic-ness and all the other bullshit that sets them apart, and you make a big deal out of the ingredients you don’t allow, which also sets you apart, and gives you an easy reason to refuse most mass-market products.
Same thing for the woo; will they make more money selling Vicks Vapo Rub that’s sold at the Wal-Mart down the street, or will they make more money selling homeopathic natural peppermint, beeswax and gator fat purifying salve?
Everything produced by PepsiCo and General Mills is “mass-market,” with national distribution. That’s kind of the point of the whole huge-food-conglomerate thing.
Are you under the impression that Izze juice drinks, or any brand mentioned, are not available in non-WF stores? I can’t speak to price, having not been inside a WF in about fifteen years, but they certainly aren’t exclusive retailers for any such products.
No, I meant that their distribution isn’t as broad as say… regular Pepsi, and their price point will be higher, being a more boutique brand, and this fits into Whole Foods’ differentiation strategy.
At least in my area, the Izze drinks aren’t necessarily widely or well distributed; I wanted the grapefruit version, and ended up having to go to WF to get it; the local groceries typically had a flavor or two, but not grapefruit, while WF had several flavors.
As for the organic = no pesticides; it’s a common mistake, and the worse issue is that in many cases, the organic pesticides are less selective and used in greater quantities than the synthetic stuff, thereby being WORSE for all involved.
Higher antioxidant and lower cadmium concentrations and lower incidence of pesticide residues in organically grown crops: a systematic literature review and meta-analyses
And soil used in organic farming can have higher levels of heavy metals than soils utilized in conventional farming.
"Scientists have known since the 1920s that organic fertilizers used by farmers to supplement conventional systems—composted animal manure, rock phosphates, fish emulsions, guano, wood ashes, etc.—further contaminate topsoil with varying concentrations of heavy metals. Organic advocates, who rely exclusively on these fertilizers, remain well aware of the problem today, although they rarely publicize the point."
In neither situation have these differences been shown to have an impact on human health.
I don’t intentionally buy organic unless it’s a specific product where the taste/some other element is at play. A lot of “organic” milk is ultra-pasteurized which just means it has a much higher shelf life. You can find non-organic ultra-pasteurized milk, but it’s rarer. Since I go through milk slowly it’s worth it to pay a little extra versus throwing half a jug away. I’ve found cage-free eggs taste better than normal eggs, slightly. Again, cage free and organic aren’t synonymous, and you can find non-organic cage free, but again, it’s rare. It seems most stores if they’re going to opt for a cage free egg it’s also going to be a certified organic egg.
I think for me the biggest problem with the organic movement is it’s intrinsically linked to the anti-scientific anti-GMO movement. Part of the USDA certified organic is that it contains no GMO, and that’s bad. I’d prefer if instead it was a certification just referring to pesticide use (and maybe fertilizer types? I can’t remember what else goes into it.) By excluding GMOs I think organic is going to have a hard time truly being better for the environment because it is less efficient per acre which means large scale organic farming has occur over much larger areas of land for the same yield as traditional farming. This increases the use of many natural resources consumed in farming not to mention the raw land usage.
I think eventually as we get better at GMO we won’t even need any sprayed on pesticides at all, which would be a really good thing.
It seems a lot of people in this thread buy organic for environmental reasons. It’d be interested to see some official polling on why people buy organic, in my anecdotal experience the posters here are far outliers. Everyone I know who buys organic simply believes it’s a premium/superior product and are willing to pay for it, so they’ve essentially been successfully marketed to; I knew there were those who bought into it for environmental reasons but had never met one personally.