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Comment by uniformlyrandom | Hacker News Reader

Good. Whole foods is a nice idea gone horribly wrong (horribly expensive)? I buy some stuff I cannot find anywhere else from WF, but I get the rest for half of what WF is asking next door.

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It really depends where you live.

WF in Portland, OR is a fair bit cheaper than WF in SF, for example.

As an ex-pat I honestly can't shop anywhere else. WF is basically comparable to a normal sort of non-discount supermarket chain in Australia (Coles, Woolworths). I've checked out Trader Joes a couple of times but I'm not sure if I can do all my shopping there.

Everything at Safeway is really low quality (?) and/or overly "American" (not really sure how to describe this :).

> not really sure how to describe this

filled with sugar

What exactly has gone horribly wrong? They made money hand over fist and established themselves as the place to grocery shop on a weekly basis.

They were the place to shop for me until I started actually cooking on a regular basis. I just can't justify ingredients for a recipe adding up to the same cost as a decent restaurant would charge for the meal.

The truth is a decent restaurant has almost no margin on the main course food. The money is made on selling wine, cocktails and to an extent on starters and deserts.

You're paying a premium for food that is expensive to produce. Good restaurants buy the highest quality foods and this cuts deeply into the margin.

So yes, buying high quality food and cooking it at home will cost about what a restaurant charges you. You simply can not have it both ways. Either you want high quality food and will pay for it or you're buying low quality food at a premium with a nice brand on it or you're just buying cheap food which is of poor quality.

Are you saying that the main course price doesn't cover anything except the cost of the ingredients? No salaries, rent, utilities, marketing, supplies or maintenance?

I believe what they meant was that the price of the meal brings them to break-even (ingredients, staff, rent, etc) and their profit is made via alcohol and meal add-ons (appetizers, deserts). I don't know enough about the restaurant business to know if it's true, but it sounds plausible.

Right, but debaserab2's complaint was that the ingredients alone bought at WF cost the same as a full meal at the restaurant (which includes all that other stuff).

Wholesale vs retail, probably. Plus any volume discount (buying an entire restaurant's worth of food at once instead of just one cart's worth).

I buy non-organic vegetables and meat from my grocery store at a significantly lower price than whole foods and to be honest I don't notice a quality difference.

>established themselves as the place to grocery shop on a weekly basis.

Not really for me and other family members/friends.

Usually it's Safeway or Trader Joes (in the Bay Area at least).

Same for my family. My wife added this local farms produce delivery startup thing a month ago. Seems to work well. For meat we go to Schaub (a proper butcher). There are also very good farmers markets every Sunday in PA, Menlo and Los Gatos.

Next project is to get an extra freezer and buy a whole cow and pig from a local farm.

I know of no one personally who shops at Whole Foods for anything other than specialty items. Hell, my last 10 trips in the past 2 years were nothing but falafel, hummus, and beer.

It depends what you consider specialty. Things I eat regularly, like tofu, almond butter, and coconut water are much cheaper at whole foods than my local grocery store. I think trader joes could be cheaper than wf for those things, but last time I checked (which was admittedly long ago) wf was much cheaper for steel-cut oatmeal than tjs.

If Whole Foods was in financial trouble before the acquisition, I don't imagine they'll be able to cut prices and maintain their quality. Something's got to give and I think it's going to be that "nice idea" you mention.

On the other hand, Amazon has deep pockets and is okay losing money for a while. So who knows?

Amazon could optimize the supply chain. The could also bring their technology expertise to minimize overhead (such as replacing all the cashiers with their "no checkout" system).

> Amazon could optimize the supply chain.

I see this idea thrown around but why can Amazon do a better job than Whole Foods has already done?

Can they combine the supply chain with their Amazon Pantry and get more cost sharing or something?

Amazon ships a whole lot more stuff than Whole Foods. They have a fleet of trucks and even their own planes. Amazon is really a logistics company.

Basically, they have a whole lot more experience moving things around than Whole Foods.

> I don't imagine they'll be able to cut prices and maintain their quality.

So you think when someone buys them with lots of money, they can't cut prices? Um, what?

I hear this a lot, but for basic groceries (veg, etc) WF was never that expensive.

The trouble is that everything else was, and they are masters of the upsell.

WF sells many items at cost. Like fresh oysters. Many others at higher margins. Just like any other grocery store. What I like about WF is you can find organic of just about anything.

Depends on the location, I guess. In Houston, WF is about twice as expensive for many common meat, produce, deli, and bakery items compared to stores like Central Market.

Meat they’ve always been pretty pricy for, that’s true. Mostly because it’s all the more expensive types (grass fed, organic, unusual types, etc).

It’s good value for what it is but more expensive overall.

> horribly expensive

Where I live WF is cheaper than the Safeway next door for any items that are carried by both. The rest might be more expensive but higher quality (hence worth it for some people).

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