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Comment by clumsysmurf | Hacker News Reader

I think the customer is going to lose, eventually. I was chatting with a worker at WFM and they mentioned that WFM sends out inspectors to farms / suppliers to make sure things are up to high standards.

Now compare that with Amazon, who co-mingles inventory and can't even guarantee what I purchased was authentic.

Also, will I pay more for Kale after reading a book on food nutrition? Will I have to put the food in the basket to know what the price is?

I see two very different cultures. Time well tell, I guess.

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I always viewed Whole Foods much more cynically. Their supposed high quality is more about marketing to gullible liberals than anything else. The fact that they sell homeopathy sets off my scammer alarms.

With regards to homeopathic remedies, I would argue find store that sells any health products that doesn't have at least a small shelf dedicated to homeopathic remedies. I agree with you that the basis for the homeopathic remedies is non-sense, but it also strikes me as a caveat emptor, to a certain point.

As for the other half, are you suggesting that only those of liberal politics would ever buy organic or fresh produce, or be taken in by the marketing of Whole Foods? The statement reads as a non-sequitur, and I'm not sure how it is relevant.

Whole Foods sells an image and a promise of organic, and I'm pretty sure they will meet the current US legal definition of organic for whatever they're selling. It's not a relevant factor for me when buying, but I wouldn't call people who do buy there "gullible", as I'm pretty sure Whole Foods is giving the customer exactly what they want.

I probably shouldn't have used liberals and derailed my thought with politics. I had more of a stereotype in my head that probably has less to do with politics, and more to do with having money, and a certain amount of guilt about money, and thinking you can use the money to ameliorate some of that guilt. This would be a very gullible stereotype to have as a customer and you could see how marketing would be tempted to go over the top making up new things to feel guilty about and new ways to spend money to feel less guilty about them.

I think it's much simpler than that. People that have the money to buy healthy food simply like to buy healthy food.

The food there is excellent. I'm not rich by any standard and I love shopping there because to me it is high quality. Go to a typical large grocery store deli, then go to Whole Foods deli, you can easily see which one is better.

I'm not sure where you came up with the "I feel guilty about the money I have so I'm going to spend it on foods that are healthy (or claim to be healthy, I'm not sure if you're making that connection or not)" construct. Seems like a reach.

I am making that connection. I don't think there's much difference between hawking homeopathic medicine and expensive "Veganic Sprouted Ancient Maize Flakes".

Organic food has nothing to do with health. Organic refers to the type of fertilizers and pesticides used and is 100% a gimmick. Abandoning inorganic chemical fertilizers and pesticides would lead to mass starvation across the world. And in terms of the food quality, there is no evidence that it makes any meaningful difference.

Being organic doesn't make food healthier. Whole Foods just seems to have paid attention to procuring good produce. For the premium they charge, they can afford to buy the best product.

> And in terms of the food quality, there is no evidence that it makes an iota of meaningful difference.

Some oranges are sweet, and make delicious orange juice. Some oranges are sour, and make sour orange juice. When I'm shopping for oranges, my first choice is locally-grown, then organic, then I might try whatever 'conventional' orange the store happens to carry. I find some stores to be more reliable for carrying decent oranges than others. I think Trader Joe's organic frozen orange juice is more reliable than the other frozen orange juices that I've tried.

tldr: IMO organic oranges are usually sweeter than non-organic; local > organic.

I know someone who, in the US, is allergic to non-organic milk but not organic milk. They can drink EU non-organic milk fine. Apparently this is due to the hormones fed to cattle in the US.

Please, a lot of things like hormone and antibiotics fed vs non of that are not a gimmick, maybe just say you are reserved on the health benefits. Sure it's not specific to organic, but at least in Europe a big part of the specifications are meaningful.

I understand a certain lifestyle is annoying for some people and that a lot of bullshit is sold in organic stores (homeopathy, ...) and that not everything is healthy because it's "ancient and natural" but let's not confuse everything.

> Please, a lot of things like hormone and antibiotics fed vs non of that are not a gimmick, maybe just say you are reserved on the health benefits.

Worrying about hormones and antibiotics in meat and dairy while being concerned about health makes as much sense as worrying about the effects of filters in cigarettes while looking to avoid lung cancer. Animal products are unhealthy, and inhumane.

You can worry about the presence of these additives and drugs in plants and plant-based dishes that you eat. This is not even remotely connected to vegan / non-vegan products.

> You can worry about the presence of these additives and drugs in plants and plant-based dishes that you eat.

Do you understand the difference between plants and animals? Animal antibiotics and hormones are not applied to plants. Plants are not susceptible to diseases that can be transferred to humans. The pesticides that are sprayed on plants are entirely different chemicals. Plants have the least problems with heavy metal and toxin bioaccumulation because they are at the bottom of the food chain. The risks for contamination of animal and animal product foods are orders of magnitude greater than for plant based food. But all that ignores the fact that meat and dairy are inherently unhealthy for humans - they are carcinogenic and cause heart disease.

The comment you responded to never said anything about organic food, they simply postulated that people shop at Whole Foods because they carry healthy food - which they do.

I used to live near a WF and shopped there semi-regularly. They definitely stock non-organic produce, and it's consistently of high quality. Likewise for their salad bar, bakery & hot meals.

It's not the only place in the world that stocks healthy food, but I can certainly see why people shop there.

I'm not an expert in this field and am open minded about it if you have some evidence to share. I did a quick Google search and it looks like this is at the very least a disputed topic. Some research shows that there are some (albeit minimal) health benefits to organic food. Saying it is a gimmick seems wrong.

And I don't think anyone on the chain is arguing to abolish chemical fertilizers. We're talking about the health benefits of the food sold at Whole Foods, which may or may not be organic and/or contain certain additives.

In Toronto, produce we buy at Whole Foods lasts longer once we get it home than any other market or supermarket, even Loblaws and our local market. Don't even get me started on Sobey's, fresh produce from Sobey's often spoils and goes into the green bin the next day.

I buy most things online, yet I don't understand how you can buy "fresh" anything online: don't you need to see it, test it, smell it?

I would never buy a melon that I can't smell first, or a fish without seeing its eyes, or shrimps that I can't see how blue the head is, or cheese that I can't press, etc.

How is this going to work? If you don't care about these things, isn't it easier to buy canned goods or go to the restaurant?

What are the customers who want fresh but don't need to see / touch first?

One of the reasons I can't seem to buy groceries online no matter how lazy I feel like being.

I don't know about the things you cook, but when I inspect things in the grocery store I'm generally checking for (a) bruises/damage and (b) being past its best.

Online grocery retailers have their employees (and stock management practices) doing those checks for you.

A short-sighted company might think it was profitable to send bottom-of-the-barrel leftovers to online customers - but in the long term there's much more money to be made by sending a family $100 of good quality groceries every week forever than sending them $100 of poor quality groceries once. So retailers have every incentive to get the checks right.

With that said, if you're an expert cook, it's possible you're sensitive to nuances the average person would overlook. In that case online shopping might not meet all your needs.

Yes it's true it would be counter-productive to sell bad products.

However, when you shop in person you can choose, and so the best eye gets the best products (or at least, so she thinks!)

And it's not only about quality: sometimes the same customer wants different things. Regarding ripening for example, sometimes I want very ripe fruits to use now, and sometimes I want greener ones because I intend to use them in a few days. Same for cheese, what you want depends on when you intend to use it. I don't want a Camembert hard as stone to eat tonight. I want one that's "almost bad".

How do I tell all this to Amazon Fresh?

In some cases, there are multiple products. For example, with things like bananas and avocados retailers will offer a choice of 'ripen at home' and 'ready to eat'

Some retailers also let you provide instructions as free text. Obviously this is more flexible, but prevents a computer from checking the worker's work.

>I buy most things online, yet I don't understand how you can buy "fresh" anything online: don't you need to see it, test it, smell it?

No, you just need to trust the seller.

>How is this going to work? If you don't care about these things, isn't it easier to buy canned goods or go to the restaurant?

Just because somebody doesn't care to smell and tickle their melons (no pun intended) it doesn't mean that they have to go straight to canned food.

Most people don't check their fresh produce that much anyway, they just get some items off the shelve and that's that.

Your comment is basically saying you think the high standards and customer experience that Whole Foods has cultivated will stop under Amazon's leadership.

If that's the case, and there is sufficient demand, another "Whole Foods" will sprout and fill that market demand.

>If that's the case, and there is sufficient demand, another "Whole Foods" will sprout and fill that market demand.

Other possibilities:

a) there's no sufficient demand, so that's the new situation the few discerning customers have to deal with forever

b) there's demand, but it's no sufficient enough to support two such big chains, so at best smaller, scattered around the country competitors arise, with jacked-up prices to support the higher standards (since they are not WF scale)

c) there's sufficient demand, but the Amazon merger has given WF so much power that they can crush any challenger

d) there's sufficient demand, but for a new challenger to emerge, gain traction and cover even half of the area WF covers will take close to a decade

Real markets are not like some economic fairy tale...

What's WFM?

Whole Foods Market. WFM was also their stock ticker.

Consumers rarely lose out from more competition entering a market -- I don't see why this situation would be an exception.

how does an acquisition equate to more competition? Amazon opening its own grocery chain = more competition; that is not what this is.

That acquisition is Amazon entering the brick and mortar grocery market which is new for Amazon.

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