I hear this all the time from people and I have to wonder if they’ve ever been to a Whole Foods. Just maybe, if all you buy is boxed cereal and recycled paper towels, Trader Joe’s is better, but I go to Whole Foods for the meat and seafood and cheeses and prepared foods. There is no comparison at all.
Somebody hands me fifty smackers and says “Go get a martini shaker,” I’m getting an eight dollar shaker and forty-two bucks worth of booze and ice.
Maybe they’ve improved since they were called Fresh Fields, but I remember checking them out a few years back under their old name. Ground beef at $9 a pound (about 3 times the going rate for extra-lean back then), what looked to be fresh-ground deli peanut butter at about $4.50/lb (bought some because, back in those pre-TJ’s days, I was desperate for some real PB), which turned out to be fresh-ground PB with even more sugary additives than Jif or Peter Pan puts in theirs; and I can’t remember what-all else after all this time.
Let’s just say that anything I might have bought was eye-poppingly expensive. If stuff had been just 50% more expensive than I would have expected elsewhere, to subsidize their having a wider array of specialty options, I could’ve seen that. But the everyday stuff seemed to be 2-3 times as expensive, and the specialty stuff was off the charts.
Ridicule away.
Most of the time, however, the products are simply not identical. Those who believe they are are perhaps not the most discerning customers.
And as far as produce is concerned, Trader Joe’s is simply no match for Whole Foods. I do not have the luxury of shopping at both of them, since there are no Trader Joes’ in NYC.
The people who pay more also pay more sales tax. The person who drives all over town checking prices pays less sales tax and burns more gas and damages the planet with all those exaust fumes. Then if they invite me over I have to look at their ugly-ass cocktail shaker. This depressses me and my productivity goes down at work. This brings down the performance of my company and our stock value plummemts and lots of retirees now have to eat dog food just because you were too damn cheap to buy a nice cocktail shaker.
Now that I think about it, your comment makes me wonder if you’ve ever been to a Trader Joe’s. Can’t say I’ve ever bought paper products there; that’s what Food Lion is for. And while I like their boxed cereals, I don’t eat cereal often.
What I go to TJ’s for is…well, not meats (although I do occasionally buy fresh chicken or ground beef there), but seafood (frozen, admittedly), cheeses (which they’ve got a pretty good variety of), and prepared foods (stir-fry dinners in a bag, Asian frozen dinners, tamales, taquitos, and the like). Plus stuff like fresh salsa, hummus, tabbouleh, marinara sauces, basmati rice, and stuff like that. Gorp. Coffee. Chocolate raspberry sticks. Snapea crisps.
I’d be delighted to take my TJ’s shopping list into Whole Foods, just to see what the overlap looks like (pretty heavy, I betcha) and what sorta sticker shock I run into (ditto), next weekend I do my errands.
What if they’re three guys, and they each hand you a ten, and tell you to buy a thirty-dollar shaker, and you find one for twenty-five, but you only give them each a buck back - so each paid nine bucks each, which equals twenty seven for the shaker. But you kept five! That’s Thirty Two dollars. Where did the other two dollars come from 
?
[Rocky Rococo]
Maybe yes, maybe no.
[/R.R.]
The $50 martini shaker may be six times as good as the $8 martini shaker in some undefinable way. That might may be so, and I’m just too coarse to register such subtleties.
But I also know that a relative handful of instances of buying the everyday $8 product instead of its $50 upscale cousin, and I’ve saved enough for airfare to Maui. 
TJ’s isn’t much on produce - no question about it. That’s what farmers’ markets are for.
I’m definitely going to have to drop in on the local Whole Foods, on my next errand weekend. Gotta see this produce that’s worth paying Whole Foods prices for.
I had an illustration of the difference between Whole Foods and my local Safeway last week.
I was jonesing for some good new crop autumn pears, and bought a few at Safeway. They were a bargain, and they looked and smelled wonderful, but they tasted like balls of wet cornmeal. They all got tossed into the trash after I bit into each in search of quality.
So I popped into Whole Foods and bought a few Bartletts. My God! They were sweet, juicy and perfect. Worth every penny of the difference in price between the two places. The “honey crisp” apples and the peaches from Yakima I bought were also superb examples of each fruit. I’m going back today for more.
So just because two places are selling the “same” item and it costs more at one of the places doesn’t mean the person buying the more expensive item is a jerk. There often is quite a bit of difference.
This is exactly what I’ve been wondering this week. I’m fed up with the quality of produce at Safeway and King Soopers, and was thinking about hitting Whole Foods this weekend. Now I know I will. Thanks!!!
(RT, I will still buy my paper towels at Safeway. 
)
Well, if the utility function is logarithmic and…Um, nevermind. 
I don’t disagree at all. I suppose I just can’t get all worked up over other people paying more than they absolutely have to for relatively low-cost goods. I’m hardly the richest kid on the block, but it makes little difference to me whether I pay $10 or $50 for a little bit of home decor. If it’s a decent product that satisfies my needs and will last, I’ll buy it without losing much sleep.
There’s one in my 'hood once per week, alas. That gets me through the weekend and perhaps Monday.
No doubt about it, WF (aka Whole Paycheck) is expensive. But where I live, shitty produce from Key Food is also quite expensive, and cheap meat ranges from mildly putrefying to downright viscous.
Perhaps I spend an extra $50 per month shopping at WF and not coupon-cutting at my local C(rap)-Town, but it is well worth it for me. I am fortunate that I can make this trade-off. I realize that this is not feasible for lots of people. Choosing to spend the extra money does not mean that I am some kind of moron. While this may in fact be true, it is not because I bought the overpriced but absolutely divine golden grape tomatoes at WF.
I’m lucky enough to have a QFC and Whole Foods within 2 blocks of my apartment; the meat, deli, and dry goods at QFC are pretty good. The produce is terrible, so I go to Whole Foods for that, as well as things like bulk foods, fancy-schmancy cheeses (my weakness), and sometimes a splurge from the meat case. Of course I have to walk 6 blocks to Safeway if I want the peanut butter I like, but I figure the exercise is just a bonus!
Value is subjective.
Why Maui? For less money you can fly to Mexico and get the same utility - at least I don’t think there is an important difference between Maui and Mexico…
Then you can spend all that extra money on expensive designer martini shakers.
People like to go and buy shiny things without having to give it much thought. It’s so much easier to go the ‘luxury’ chain store than it is to go antiquing or trying to find something that not 100,000 other people own the exact same thing of. Sometimes I shop at places like these, but I like to avoid it. Of course, that’s easier in New York. However, I’d never pay $ 50.00 for a Martini shaker. To me, I am mixed about these things. I hate that our society is so plastic like this, but I also like to see Rubes get fleeced.
Erek
People on the East Coast of the U.S. who spend all that extra money to go and stay on Maui, when they could have tropical fun much cheaper in the Caribbean are imbeciles.
I will often spend more (if I have it) for something that is “slightly more aesthetically pleasing” because I personally get a lot of bang for my buck out of aesthetics. The difference between something that pleases my senses every time I use it and something that I am indifferent to or eventually find annoying (because it was so poorly designed) remains for me long after the extra bucks are gone and I’ve forgotten what additional ugly thing I could have spent them on. The advantages of having two slightly uglier things for the price of one nicer one are lost on me.
I trash pick all my furniture.
Until the revolution!!!
Well, there’s the distinction. If the $8 martini shaker will fall apart after a year, or if it really looks like crap, then you’re doing yourself no favors buying it. But as I said earlier,
See the magic words? Several times as much money, slightly more aesthetically pleasing, and no more functional. (And there’s a world of such consumer ‘opportunities’ out there, and plenty of people to ridicule who are availing themselves of those opportunities.)
For some real value, I recommend reading lessons. They’ll serve you well for a lifetime.
So you shop for produce how often each week?? Dayum.
Man, you must have expensive grocery stores where you live. That’s all I can say. Because unless they’ve changed a lot since their Fresh Fields days, I doubt I could shop there for less than a $50/week jump in my grocery bills, and I’d have to be very careful for the increase to not push $100.
Ok, where do I find a better deal? Any other store that sells cookware for less than William Sonoma or Sur La Table seems to only sell plastic crap. My $5 Target spatula is starting to leave plasticy threads on my food after 8 months. I’ll gladly pay $50 for a good martini shaker. I looked around for one, checked 8 stores, finally found a metal one for $25. When you put ice in it, it shrinks unevenly and you can’t open the cap. You know what? I’m sick of buying slightly cheaper crap just because it’s 10% cheaper and 90% worse! I’d rather do without if I can’t afford it. I can live without a martini shaker. It’s not oxygen!
…
Again, if cheap stores sold products that perform the same, not actually resemble the product, us “rubes” will stop paying $50 for a martini shaker and $80 for a shirt and even gasp $200 for a pair of shoes!
It’s the assholes who absolutely have to get something regardless of the quality that drive the prices up for everybody. If you’re willing to pay $5 for a plastic martini shaker with iron crosses or hearts on it, you’re taking up the market niche for a good $5 martini shaker made of metal with the pieces fitting well at normal temperatures! If you don’t have $50 for a good martini shaker, make 'em stirred. When the crap manufacturers go out of business, the quality ones will reduce prices.
Here ya go. Have a ball.
(I’ve had nothing but good luck with it. It’s rock-solid. Basically, it’s just professional barware.)
THAT’S THE ONE! I got it at CostPlus World Market for $25, and it sucks! It is identical!