Whole Foods / Fresh & Wild

On a recent trip to Washington DC I went to Whole Foods for the first time.  On the one hand it was impressive to have somewhere that size serve up so much healthy food.  On the other, I had a slight sense of dread that really this was just a Wal-Mart/Tesco in disguise.  Having said that, I did also wonder why nothing like that existed in the UK.

I was reminded of this twice in the last 24 hours.  First with Channel 4's Dispatches: Supermarket Secrets program, on last night.  Second, The Economist's profile of John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods.  But, I am wrong.  Because we do have our own version of Whole Foods, Fresh & Wild, which it turns out is owned by Whole Foods.  F&W stores are nowhere near the size of WF but they do sell good stuff.  But my scepticism remains and it can largely be summed up with The Economist's headline "Wal Mart for the granola crowd."  On the one hand these stores are little more than supermarkets with the same profit imperatives as the mainstream retailers, on the other they have this slightly grating tendency towards right-on attitudes.

I would have assumed these two traits are mutually exclusive, the success of Whole Foods would imply otherwise.  I would be interested to know just what suppliers think of them, whether they're really any better or worse than a Tesco or Sainsbury's.  I also think it would be interesting for someone to look into the real level of choice they offer us.  Are the products they stock significantly different from the "Best of" ranges so favoured by (UK) supermarkets?  It's also interesting that the two markets where these Organic Supermarkets seem to succeed are the US and UK, both of which lack the European market tradition and have a heavy reliance on supermarkets.

Or possibly, my cynicism is misplaced and in fact someone has tapped into a very clever concept: there is a significant customer base that is willing to pay a premium for higher quality food, but who are used to (and like) shopping in supermarkets.  As such consumers intuitively get the concept, which explains why these stores flourish in wealthy neighbourhoods of wealthy countries.

Comments

[micawber]

Whole Foods is vastly superior to Fresh & Wild in terms of the reliability of the products, especially the produce. Don't mind paying for GOOD food but ...