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well... its not so bad if you shop the sales... i bought a case of organic mangos - about 18 for 17.99 last week. not too shabby. if you buy only on sale items which they do regularly- its almost the same as fred meyers or QFC, sometimes cheaper.
also i notice if i pay a bit more than feels comfortable, i tend to be more careful about not letting food go bad.
I love mangos just as much as the next guy, maybe more! That being said, what in heaven's name are you going to do with 18 of them?! They are perishable you know! Opening an Orange Julius in your front yard maybe? Inquiring minds want to know!
Make sure you wash them all ASAP, so the fruit flies don't take over your kitchen. Good luck!
I shop at 4 different grocery stores, including ALDI, Trader Joes . . . and on occasion, WF, for specialty items. The WF in the little town where our mountain house is located is not upscale . . . the one where our primary residence is located is VERY upscale.
I also go weekly to the farmer's market during the summer.
But yeah, everyone that I know (including regular patrons!) call it Whole Paycheck, so I am surprised others haven't heard it referred to as such.
And it is soooo the place to be seen if you care about such things, lol.
Probably about half of my grocery shopping, on average. Sure, some products will be more pricy there than elsewhere, but other products are cheaper there than other stores.
Whole Foods is convenient - just a few blocks away from my office, and I love being able to leave work early or pick up a few things on my lunch hour, and avoiding the crowds. I also love their produce, cheese counter, and tea selection.
The remainder of my shopping is a combination of Trader Joe's, the local farmer's market/CSA basket, and Safeway or Target for stuff like toilet paper and cleaning products.
Basic groceries at Whole Foods aren't any more expensive than normal grocery stores. However, they have a lot of specialty items and brands that can get quite pricey.
I go every once in awhile and try to get my meat there exclusively. I'm no PETA member, but I think that animals should be harvested humanely and without unnecessary chemicals. The next best thing to wild game is the stuff that Whole Foods sells.
Look, if you want a nice and tender dry aged steak that's not injected with saline solutions to increase its weight and alter flavor, expect to pay $25.99 or more not just at WF, but anywhere else. If you want tough as leather beef that is injected with water for $4.99, shop at Walmart.
You can't expect BMWs for geo metro prices. Same goes with the prices you pay for more quality cheeses, meats, and other grocery items.
In my experience, shopping at exclusively one store will result in taking a hit on something, whether it's price, quality, selection, or any other thing that you might be looking for. The bottom line is, if you aren't shopping at several stores then you don't know what prices are in the first place, and you have no way of knowing whether you are getting a good price. Just going to a certain store doesn't guarantee that everything is a good value.
well... its not so bad if you shop the sales... i bought a case of organic mangos - about 18 for 17.99 last week. not too shabby. if you buy only on sale items which they do regularly- its almost the same as fred meyers or QFC, sometimes cheaper.
also i notice if i pay a bit more than feels comfortable, i tend to be more careful about not letting food go bad.
Whole foods in Seattle is more competitive than in other markets, I don't know why. (Yes, I'm a grocery tourist. It's my life ambition to price check an Aldis one day)
How many people do the majority of their shopping at Whole Foods?
Me, at this point. We are a household of two. One (not me) is a "vegetarian". Who doesn't like actual vegetables that much seems like. And might sneak in some seafood here and there.
A variety of factors has driven this:
About a year ago, a Whole Foods opened within about 15 minutes of home. It's not the closest food store, but it's the one place where we can get closest to everything we need food-wise without having to make additional stops.
The supermarket business here has less competition overall than in some areas. It is dominated by large local privately-held chain Giant Eagle. (The same family is also in the retail center development and management business which helps them control what goes where as far as competition for the supermarkets.) Beyond that there are one or two small local chains, Walmart, and that's about it. No other real national or regional chains operate here. We do have a couple of the limited selection stores such as Aldi and Bottom Dollar. We haven't found them to be useful for what we buy. They're also not convenient to home. There is a newer Aldi that's more convenient so I may pop in one more time to see. But I know we'd only be able to get a small portion of our items there. We like Trader Joe's but it's not convenient and not compelling enough to go as far out of the way as we would need to. If they open another location closer (rumored to be in the works) then we might put it back into the mix for some things, but it would have to be an additional stop.
Although I don't often interact with them beyond the checkout counter, the people in Whole Foods are friendly and helpful. This is less often the case in other stores. The caliber of employees seems a cut above.
I am picky about ingredients and get frustrated at what I can't find in a typical store. For example, there's nowhere else for miles around that I can get heavy cream that has nothing but cream in it (no carrageenan, etc.) Whole Foods' product mix generally means I can find something that suits.
Whole Foods' prices on a lot of items including some that I buy often are not more expensive than the standard chains here. Granted this may be partially due to the fact that we have less competition in this area as mentioned. Some of the items cost LESS at Whole Foods.
Some additional observations:
Produce is generally expensive. They may or may not always have additional variety. They have a nice variety in cut fruit and you pay handsomely for that. Packaged greens are not more expensive but many other things often are. Since we are not a year-round growing area we are generally stuck with expensive off-season produce, but I try to get more local stuff when it's in season. To their credit, Whole Foods will do this a bit as well but only with a few items.
While many items are not more expensive, it is certainly possible to select a lot of items that while quite probably of better quality are QUITE expensive, more so than most other stores. The other day the one that got into our cart was the single prepared crab cake for $8! Although, once it came home, it did appear to be of very high quality. (I did not eat any of it.)
We've shifted almost all of our grocery spending to this store but also have in recent months cut our eating out to essentially nil on a regular basis. This includes the money I used to spend almost daily buying lunch out while at work; I bring it instead. It may not have decreased our food costs this way, but I don't think we've actually increased it overall.
We will be getting one in Savannah soon, but it will not be near enough to me to be convenient. Even if it was, I would only go there for specialty items. It is much too expensive to shop there regularly. The same folks who frequent the Fresh Market in the same area will no doubt frequent Whole Foods. These are either old hunched over, diamond encrusted, rich ladies who don't care what they pay, or the organic, vegetarian crowd, who want the convenience of prepared foods.
Shopped there once, never again, prices totally outrageous.
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Opening an Orange Julius in your front yard maybe? Inquiring minds want to know!
