I love grocery shopping, so much so that two weeks ago I drove three hours round-trip to see the German grocer Lidl’s foray into the U.S. And so naturally, on Monday, I went to check out Whole Foods on the day that Amazon’s purchase took effect.
A decade ago, when I was a poor Senate aide, the Whole Foods in Old Town Alexandria was my closest grocery store. I shopped there a few times, but only until I learned to find my way around to the actual grocery stores. (This was pre-iPhone and Android.)
Whole Foods has not changed a lot in the years since. Greeting me upon entry was a cornucopia of fresh produce, but in the featured endcap spot was the “Farm Fresh Pick of the Season.” It was Amazon’s Echo and Echo Dot, and they were both on sale. The synergy was electric, even if the Dots were neither locally sourced nor handcrafted.
Aside from some signage throughout the store promoting Whole Foods Market + Amazon, the synergy pretty much ground to a halt. I was interested in some handsome Lifefactory 16-Ounce BPA-Free Glass Water Bottles. Alas, they were $29.99 a piece, or three for the cost of one of Jeff Bezos’s miracle Amazon Echos. Thankfully for choosy consumers, the humble glass and rubber water jug is only $12.50 on Amazon and is eligible for free one-day shipping through Prime.
The (smelly!) aisle dedicated to the practice of non-FDA evaluated pseudoscientific claims is still there. If one added up all of the fine print in the disclaimers on the various health products in the Whole Body section, you could probably cobble together a very boring book approaching the length of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.
Meats, according to BusinessWeek were an area of savings that appealed to me since I eat neither bananas nor avocados. So I headed to the back and was pleased by the free offers of meat for sampling.
First up was spiced chicken. “Is this organic?” I asked. “No” the kind contractor hawking her spices glumly replied. “It’s OK,” I replied, “I am pretty sure to some degree all the actual meat sold here is organic in the true sense of the word.” She politely laughed, and served me the chicken, which was well-spiced. I purchased her Shenandoah Spice Company Rotisserie Rub
for $7.49.
She thanked me for buying local, and since the nearby McCormick spice company is headquartered in Sparks, Maryland, I realized that I pretty much buy all my spices from local companies. Which is what Good People do.
Next was the steak, and the contractor informed me that the organic New York Strip steak was now cheaper, thanks to the benevolence of Jeff Bezos. I worried that some local farmer was taking a bath because of the price reductions. One of my neighbors, having grown many grass-fed organic fatted calves and sending his sons and daughters to sustainable colleges with all of those green organic dollars, taking a haircut.
Alas, no. This steak came from Australia, so perhaps the savings were in supply chains. Because Amazon is all about supply chains.
The non-GMO brown eggs, cage-free plus with outdoor access* were $2.99 a dozen. But I wasn’t sure if these were the same thing as the organic large brown eggs that were $4.29 just a day before. Their reduced price was $3.99. Were these organic? At home, the bad news set in. I don’t think they were truly organic, at least in the Whole Foods sense. I did take solace in knowing that the hens were fed vegetarian feed that meets non-GMO project standards, and that the birds have *at least as much space outdoors as indoors.
For a guy who buys his eggs for $.66 a dozen at Aldi, this was a lot of reading. The chickens on the packaging looked happy that I was buying their unborn, at least. And I think this was to help convince me I was Doing The Right Thing.
So, aside from prices on a few staples, the new Whole Foods is a lot like the old Whole Foods, but that won’t last, as Bezos promises. What long-run changes they make will be what I am most interested in seeing. Is the goal to sell more Amazon products and services to the Whole Foods faithful, or is it to turn these 460-plus physical locations into stores that are to appeal to a broader audience?
Obviously the goal of Amazon is to sell as much as practicable, but are they going to make the stores less pretentious? That’s why people like me can’t stand going there: I’m there to buy food, not experience the lifecycle of the Australian cow that I’m about to throw on the grill in a few hours.
Whole Foods labels everything to a meticulous degree. Animal Welfare Rating of 4? How happy was my cow before it met its end? Who knows or can explain what the levels are? The only thing missing is the name of the cow I bought.
Amazon could easily cut down on its labeling by saying the inverse. Instead of the pointlessly large logos for each group of causeheads, just boil it down to this: Does it contain GMOs, does it have gluten, is it vegan, did it use antibiotics, is it local, is it fair trade, and is it organic. I bet they’d save a lot of paper given how few of their products rate highly on the Whole Foods Seven Deadly Sin Scale™.
I’d love to see Amazon bring its AmazonGo technology to stores, allowing people to enter with their smartphone and not even have to check out thanks to cameras and RFID. But I’m not sure with all of the experiential aspects of Whole Foods that will be an easy transition. It’s too slow an experience at present. Navigating the narrow aisles with bespectacled granola-loving seniors who, far fitter than I, are having trouble going through the spec sheet for a chocolate bar for their grandkids to make sure it’s consistent with their values could be a strain on the servers running the cameras.
Whole Foodies may not like this, but Amazon is probably going to ruin what you love. You guys won the food war— everyone is doing organic everything now, even Aldi. I think my water from there is even organic. But the price for winning the food wars might be their brother-in-arms, Whole Foods.
Putting robotic computer speakers (that will soon be able to ship Whole Foods Everyday 365 staples via Prime Pantry direct to your door) in the produce section endcap is just the first step. In the end, a robot will probably send you an email sending you a receipt for what you bought, and if you’re lucky, a look at how sustainably that organic, grass-fed Australian cow lived its last days. You know, for the kids.
