April 25, 2006
Whole Foods: Price Gouging at the Salad Bar
I have long been a customer at what is now known as Whole Foods, nee Bread and Circus . The prices were always high, but, in the interest of organicity, I paid them, for my own health and that of those I feed.
However, Whole Foods has expanded. It opened a wildly successful branch six months ago in Manhattan, and then a new one in my neighborhood about which I recently waxed poetic.
Anyway, at the new organic (and "conventional') Whole Foods Palace around the corner, all prepared foods are $7.99 a pound. Well, okay, they spent alot of money redecorating, chopping and glazing, and I don't have to frequent the new one if I find the prices exorbitant. HOWEVER, when I stopped in for my usual Tuesday salad bar supply, at an entirely different location, where the salad bar, only the week before had been $5.99 a pound, I found that it's price had been raised to $7.99 as well ---AND the poached chicken had been removed.
I am sorry to be such a bitchy thrifty person, but I find paying eight dollars a pound for lettuce and cucumbers excessive. Whole Foods has gone the way of all corporations, and I'm not going there anymore. Ever.
In his new book "The Omnivore's Dilemma", Michael Pollan, while a Whole Foods fan of sorts himself, reminds us that everybody's favorite organic market is buying in vast quantities, shipping and trucking nationwide and generally supporting the evils of agribusiness. He encourages us to patronize local farmers instead, even if they are not purely organic, for many reasons, not the least of which is preserving the green space of our nation. I am planning to do just that, on my bike whenever possible.
Photo note: A shot of the fruit segment of the salad bar at The Broadway Marketplace, a chi chi gourmet grocery. You will notice the fruits are exotic, out of season, and/or tropical and must have cost a pretty penny to truck here. The price, my friends, is $4.99 a pound, not even counting the senior discount. The ethics of eating exotically will be discussed at a later date.
