Whole Foods Market – Palo Alto – Yelp — One of my favorite review sites is Yelp and reviews like this are the reason. Ha.
“The prices here are ridiculous. $4.99 per pound of peaches? You can get the same quality (if not better) produce at any farmer’s market, and those happen to be organic, as well.
But I suppose the 16 year old girls that plague the place can afford their Fuki Sushi priced rainbow rolls and Vitamin Water, given the fact that they’re clearly not spending it on clothing themselves appropriately. Having an eating disorder helps, too.
Whole Foods gets TWO stars, however, because my boyfriend and I like to play “Guess the plastic surgery!” on all the trophy wives. That, my friend, is entertainment.”
Alas in the Berkeley Whole Foods the guessing game doesn’t apply. Perhaps you could play “guess the skin condition.”
My Dad dabbled in Organic about 12 years ago. He bought 100 acres of virgin land and planted organic rye and wheat. He sold his entire yield to 12 different organic stores, Mom and Pop type places. He made money, more than he would have with soy beans and cotton. So he sold off 500 acres of cotton and soy land and bought 400 acres more virgin land and planted more whole grains. It was pretty good business. He has not had a bust year for 12 years. Before organic he had a bust year every 2 to 4 years and break even years about every 3 to 5.
11 years ago he started growing our own feed grasses, also organic and bought 3 organic raised bulls and 40 head of organic beef cattle and started selling his prime organic beef to local butchers, this led to the big beef houses like Ruth Chris or Mortons to start buying from him. This was a big money maker.
My oldest brother took over 4 years ago running the ranch and the farm and completely sold off the non-organic farm lands and has bought another 2000 acres of virgin land and raises nothing but organic grains, and veggies. He is constantly amazed at how many places beat a path to his door looking for quality organic foods. He dosen’t even have to market anymore, the stores like TJ’s and Whole Foods come to him. He stopped raising the beef(my Dad still keeps about 20 head) and now only sells the sperm from his organic bulls. Talk about big bucks.
Organic can be done on a large scale without compromising the quality that the consumer wants, and still make a very good profit.
#16…Frank….thats a great article. I know so many people just like that.
What so many conservatives, especially the religious ones forget is that being a conservative means keeping that which was good from our heritige, and good organic grown(natural farming from pre-pesticides days) food is one of those things.
Protecting our enviroment is actually a conservative princible as well as a leftist one. Maybe for different reasons
Ha! It only took 15 posts before someone brought Bush into this! Anyways…
We don’t have a Whole Foods in our town, but I went to one in Oregon while visiting my sister. She said locals jokingly refer to it as Whole Wallet. I found the store very clean & organized, very artsy & touchy-feely, the staff were neat and friendly, and it had the largest collection of products by food manufacturers that I’ve never heard of. Yes, the prices were totally outrageous, but people (including us) were paying it with smiles on their faces! I vaguely remember paying something like $4.99 for 4 small organic “vine-ripened” tomatoes packaged in a cute little plastic tray. That would’ve gone for about $1.00 at our local farmer’s market here in Cali.
Regardless, I say market rules, and if people want to pay it, more power to them! They’ve definitely found a niche market.
Whoops, I meant to say the locals in Oregon call it “Whole Paycheck”.
Prices are bound to come down as more and more farmers realize there is money in organic. Then the organic market will be at equillibrium and farmers once again won’t make a lot of money because of all the competition. Does anyone beg to differ?
>>Berkeley or ‘Burbs
I thought Berkeley WAS a ‘burb.
#25…..Drew….your right. The biggest drawback is the land reclamation rules that you have to follow before land can be used to produce organic, land that was previously used for other more conventional farming I mean. In areas where intensive farming has been going on for a couple hundred years the costs and time could be prohibitive.
But as soon as the agri-business giants decide organic is the way to go, they will bribe the appropriate goverment folks and requirements for organic will turn into a joke.
My brother has already started making his new market…..high protien, low fat grains that are grown in small quantities in areas like the Andes….or were once grown by the native American Indians of the Southwest. Atr the moment he has 9 such grains growing on 100 acres as tests. He has been getting terrific results with organic grown grain Amaranth, Quinoa, and Kaniwa…all at least 13% protien…..usually averages around 19%….and almost 100% fat free.
Trader Joe’s fan here. I shop there because it helps me resist temptation. For example, there is not a soda anywhere in the entire chain. Considering that soda pop has been identified as the single worse contributor to being overweight, that’s. . .priceless.