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Comment by driverdan | Hacker News Reader

> At a Whole Foods...

I'm curious why did you compare to Whole Foods? They are far more expensive than a regular grocery store and their food is not better.

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I hear people say that, but I keep seeing things that are cheaper at Whole Foods than they are at Safeway. Identical products, like Endangered Species brand 88% dark chocolate and Racer 5 IPA beer are cheaper at my local Whole Foods than they are at Safeway. $3.29 vs $3.99 and $4.99 vs $5.99, respectively. Their produce and meat may be more expensive, but appears to be of higher quality.

I'm not actually sure how much more expensive Whole Foods is compared to a place like Safeway.

The two stores deal with very different tagret markets and have very different economics. Whole Foods shoppers are willing to spend way more on produce, which is usually very low margin, so they don't need to make up the profit on their other items. Compare, for example Vons and Pavilions, which are owned by the same company. In my town we have a Vons literally across the street from Pavilions and while their prices for alcohol are the same, stuff like produce, coffee, and cereal can have a huge price differences even from the same vendor. Likewise, Trader Joes has the cheapest and best eggs, milk, and other staples in my general area, despite being overall more expensive.

When it comes to produce or meat, I have never seen anything at Whole Foods that would be more expensive at a low end grocery.

Trade Joe's entire reason for existence is that most of their stuff, both packages and produce. is cheaper than other area stores. There are a private label store.

This is a common myth. I've concluded Trader Joe's exists to give a veneer of guilt-free-ness to buying junk food. Avoid the cheese and meat at all costs.

Trader Joe's is great for prepared meals, but they are absolutely the worst grocer with regard to meat and produce. Often substantially worse than discount grocers like Krogers or Smart and Final.

in terms of quality or pricing?

Mostly quality, but also pricing. IMO the meat is average price and the produce is maybe a little cheaper, but the quality of both is generally very poor, especially the meat. I've had meat that was a few days away from going rancid from several different Trader Joe's locations.

Care to enlighten us TJs cheese and meat eaters?

Do you have a source on that? Other than a few staples (broth, grains, sauces, eggs, milk, etc) my local Trader Joes stores are definitely not cheaper than their local competitors, especially not the ethnic markets a few miles away. Their website marketing copy says so in a roundabout way but I shop at several Trader Joes flagship stores (including the original in Pasadena and the massive ones in south Florida) and that hasn't been true for at least a decade for produce. Their frozen foods like pizza and whatnot seem equivalent but definitely not their produce (20 cents a bannana!?)

Your experience definitely does not mirror mine. Where I live, there's a WF literally across the street from a Safeway. I've extensively comparison-shopped, and have found that WF's produce (I don't eat meat, sorry) is always cheaper than Safeway's, and there's lots more selection. In general, the local WF is cheaper for anything shopping the perimeter. Packaged goods are more expensive, and often not brand-for-brand comparable owing to WF's banned ingredients.

Where do you live? My experience comes from wealthy suburbs in Los Angeles and Miami as well as the Bay Area in general but different markets are different.

There can be many effects in play like marketing, staffing, and real estate prices. The Vons I mentioned is actually getting more expensive while the Pavilions is getting cheaper because the Vons cut back on cashiers. The longer lines have caused many of my friends and I to start shopping at Pavilions, which is causing a death spiral as Vons tries to charge more for produce just so they can pay the overhead on the building (the Vons location costs twice as much in rent as the Pavilions because of lease terms and the outdoor mall it's in, despite being across the street).

I would imagine that different markets make a huge difference.

My only two points of reference are Denver, CO and Kansas City, MO.

In Kansas City, Whole Foods produce and dairy prices were anywhere from 100-200% more than their Price Chopper / Hen House / Hy-Vee equivalents. Meat was marked up around 150% from their commodity supermarket price with a marked increase in quality and variety.

Denver has a roughly 30% higher cost of living than KC, and here the Whole Foods / Sprouts produce and dairy goods prices are competitive to slightly-higher than the King Soopers (local Kroger subsidiary) / Safeway prices. Meat is marked up around 100% from the commodity supermarket price, but with the same distinction in quality and variety.

This is all anecdotal and subject to my terrible aggregated memories of shopping trips, but this subject is fascinating to ponder.

Those sorts of things are loss leaders. If you pick 20 random items at Whole Foods, you see a 30-50% price difference.

My sister is a Whole Foods acolyte. She spends like $6 a gallon for shirt dated, ultra pasteurized milk because While Foods. Same product made in the same dairy at the local store for normals is like $2.79/g.

I used to like whole foods for the cheese and hot bar. But as they made the prepared food shittier and local groceries upped the cheese game, it's just a ripoff.

Whole Foods and Safeway are both expensive in the Bay Area. You want something cheap, go to Lucky's.

My main point is that most western groceries have an expectation of having any produce in any season, eg apples during the summer and peaches during the winter.

Whole Food is just an example of a national food chain most people are familiar with.

For example, outside of the west coast, nobody knows what an Albertson's is. And outside of the midwest, nobody knows what a HyVee is.

What about Trader Joe's? Good quality at more reasonable prices.

Did you miss my entire reply?

Was trying to provide a common point of reference.

Whole Foods exists in the UK and Canada. Trader Joe's does not.

Have you shopped at Whole Foods or Bristol Farms for seasonal products? Compared to the major grocery store chains their produce is leaps and bounds better. I don't believe in the organic marketing crap but their food, especially when it comes to fruit, is amazing, unlike anything you can find at Kroger, Publix, or Safeway.

Cherries, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, peaches, pears, apples, tomatoes, and countless of other produce taste much better than anything I can get at a normal grocery. Hell, I have very fond memories of eating fresh food from my grandparents dacha or picking wild berries in the forest behind my school and the high end grocers are the only place where they taste even remotely as good as what I had in Russia. Russia.

You get what you are willing to pay for, especially when it costs two to three times the lower end.

Part of this is due to volume. A chain like Safeway needs massive volume to supply all their stores. A smaller chain can be more selective in what they buy because they need smaller amounts. Smaller chains are also more willing to deal with local farms directly for regional supply.

In PDX, I'd rank the produce quality as:

1) farmers market (unlike many cities, in Portland the vendors are the farmers) 2) Zupans - on the spendy side but quite good 3) Whole Foods 4) Fred Meyers 5) New Seasons - small local chain, but lousy buyers 6) Safeway

Appreciated your review!

At one time the farmers markets in PDX were superb, great produce at modest prices. Over the years they've become "fancy", kind of resembling Saturday Market, and prices are high. There are bargains to be found, though it takes some effort.

Asian markets, like out on 82nd, offer some interesting (and to us non-Asians, rather exotic) options. Unlike the Chinese vendors described in the article, produce is generally in good shape and prices reasonable. Also they're good places to buy cooking hardware, like an authentic cast-iron wok, for way less than what they charge at upscale kitchen stores.

No argument about Zupans for fresh fish, better than other grocers in PDX. They usually have good produce, but it is expensive and often available elsewhere for less.

Whole foods is OK, but I don't find it's particularly superior. New Seasons can be good, if selections somewhat quirky.

Freddy's is probably best for staples, partly because they're a Kroger's subsidiary which is a huge national chain. Hardly ever go to Safeway as nothing special there and further away.

I'd add that local, seasonal produce isn't hard to find in PDX, many grocers do feature regionally sourced fruits and vegetables, along with the "factory made" stuff. There's always the option of "U-Pick" on Sauvie's Island, an adventure in itself.

Whole Foods produce is only better in areas that have a Whole Foods. In areas without a Whole Foods, all the produce goes to the lower-end stores and sold for the lower prices, regardless of quality. Once Whole Foods moves in, they split off the higher-quality produce, selling it for a higher price, and the quality everywhere else drops.

Do you have any data on that? How would you know that the food that would be marked up by Whole Foods is sent instead to regular groceries to be sold for cheaper? Maybe the good produce grown locally at small scale is sold to local stores but given the extremely lucrative agricultural export market, I find it very hard to believe that the good produce is sold cheap locally instead of shipped elsewhere at a huge markup. California avacados or oranges, for example, cost significantly more in Florida or New York, far beyond the extra cost of transportation, spoilage, etc. and this profitability fuels the California agriculture industry.

Most grocery stores with a reputation for being expensive or upscale actually have list prices on comparable goods to "cheaper" stores, but carry a preponderance of more expensive products that the cheaper stores don't carry at all.

(This is for general chain grocery stores; independent and ethnic stores don't necessarily follow the danger pattern.)

Nah, I shop at both Safeway and Whole Foods, and the comparable products are cheaper at Whole Foods (vegetables, fruits, and meat) on the whole, except for the very high end items.

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