Food Blog

Is Whole Foods The Wal Mart of Grocery Stores? I was going to respond in the comments, but am a little late to the discussion.

You can’t compare Whole Foods to WalMart because WF isn’t going to run the carnecias and mom n’ pops out of town. It just isn’t in competition with places that sell half a lamb for the price they sell a half a rack of chops.

I’m not raking in the big bucks (perhaps I should get one of those high paying register operator jobs at WF) so I can’t afford to shop for daily meals at WF, nor can I afford the gas to drive all over Chicago at 2.50 a gallon to buy the best ingredients at the best prices available in the area for my daily meals. I can eat very well for a week if I go to Jewel/Dominicks with the money people spend on a lunch at WF.

If you stop eating prepared food and learn how to cook, the money you save will allow you to go to WF and buy a bunch of morels, a Bison rib-eye or a wild-caught Copper River salmon once in a while.

Bison rib eye, bought at Whole Foods.
Worth every penny.

Ed, in the comments (towards the bottom), has some very good pointers for food in the area (somebody should give this guy a food blog), and his strawberry comparision example is right on. A supermarket strawberry (or tomato etc) is a supermarket strawberry (or tomato etc) whether it’s Whole Foods or whoever’s and just isn’t worth buying when you can get to a farmer’s market.

Whole Foods coming to the South Loop isn’t like a Walmart moving in. It’s filling a niche market that isn’t there, and they’re not going to under cut any competition. That location, like the one in River North, fills the grocery needs of all those people moving into the condo towers.

If we want to complain about gentrification, we should be asking where the 1,800 new Starbucks are all going to go.