So when I run out of flour, I have a decision to make: would I rather sit in traffic for 30 minutes, wait for instacart/amazon fresh delivery, or go to CVS/Walgreens? I suspect there are many people like me who pay the markup every day because it's less of a hassle.
Another factor is that in this age of instant gratification if I were to buy a week's worth of perishables items would go bad because it's so easy to have a shitty day and say screw it, let's go out, get takeout or get delivery (369 restaurants will deliver to me via uber eats) instead of cooking.
Not saying that it's a healthy way to live, but it's become a strong pull over the 10 years since I've made the transition to fully urbanized life. The way we cope, especially after having a baby, is to shop at the local butchers, bakers and markets for fresh stuff every few days and order delivery of heavy bulk goods periodically.
Accidentally running out of flour, coffee filters, half and half, etc., is probably an inevitable side effect.
Plus in some areas you cannot get a grocery in due to zoning or regulatory agencies which can increase the costs of worker and compliance needs beyond normal. There are many rules regarding handling of produce and raw foods that drug store type sellers never have to meet.
This is unfortunate, because Manhattan clearly has excess demand for good grocery stores, and the incumbents (Gristedes, etc.) are terrible.
Those grocery stores would easily be extinct with more meaningful competition. The only thing that keeps them in business is the "natural monopoly" caused by the fact that most Manhattanites don't have cars and aren't willing to travel very far for groceries.
WF (or Trader Joes for that matter) simply doesn't sell value priced versions of a lot of items. CVS will sell it at a ripoff. It probably comes out close to a wash put poor people are poor, not stupid. If the numbers worked out in favor of WF they would be shopping there. Also, nobody(TM) does their entire shopping at CVS. People will drag their asses elsewhere on a regular basis to buy certain items that are cheap. Many convenience stores, bodegas, etc. will sell a couple staples or classes of items dirt cheap in order to attract business. You buy your regular items where they are cheap (e.g. $1.50/gal brand name milk from the bodega that buys about to expire milk from a restaurant supplier for pennies and passes on the savings to create foot traffic) and buy everything else at CVS.
https://www.checkbook.org/boston-area/supermarkets/articles/...
Walmart has staples dirt cheap but a much more limited selection. Market Basket has "proper grocery store selection" and can match Walmart in prices except for the things that really lend themselves to discounts for buying in bulk (like those big boxes of eggs) which they simply don't sell. Hannaford and Price Chopper make up the part of the curve leading to the mid range which is occupied by Stop and Shop, Shaws/Star, etc. and then at the top of the price distribution is all the stores I try to avoid at all costs.
They mention large variation of prices between stores of the same chain. I strongly suspect that this correlates with how wealthy the community the store is located in is (which leads to increased cost to run the store). Where I live Aldi is the high priced upscale store. Where my parents live Stop and Shop is the high priced upscale store and Shaws/Star Market is generally cheaper.
The fact that Walmart ranked poorly does not surprise me. There are no good Walmarts in the Boston area. Walmart doesn't throw a lot of grocery effort into stores with lots of local competition. The one near me is really good. The one in Quincy is laughably bad. Tewksbury is good but I'm not sure if they consider that "the Boston area".
Absolutely false. That is the entire stated purpose of the 365 brand. What 365 does not cover is produce and meat. Meat is definitely more expensive at Whole Foods as they do not use it as a loss leader like other stores. I also sometimes wonder if one of the founders being vegan had something to do with that. Produce at WF is definitely about merchandising. The lower priced produced is very well hidden.
> shop at multiple stores (extremely difficult if you are poor)
Poor people don't have legs? I was poor for most of my life. I rode a bicycle to the grocery store. And the 365 brand stuff is mostly non-perishables. You can shop for non-perishables every couple of weeks.
Admit it. You just do not like the brand and identity the Whole Foods represents. It has nothing to do with the actual products or prices.
No. In so many ways, no. If the trade off is to save a few dollars by running around for multiple hours per week to go to multiple stores (uses gas! or takes a long time!), or just going to the nearest cheap store to get everything they need, they're going to Walmart.
It has nothing to do with brand and identity and everything to do with not wasting precious time and money.
I mean, I live in an area where there’s a Whole Foods within two blocks’ walking distance of two other grocery stores (one mid-market, one down-market.)
I think this isn’t actually that uncommon; people don’t see Whole Foods as actually satisfying the demand for “a grocery store” in an area (as it doesn’t carry many of the things people expect a larger grocery store to carry—it may have decent produce, deli, bakery, etc. sections, but its grocery section is rather lacking in anything other than up-market “bougie” brands) so if there’s an existing other grocery store, and then a Whole Foods also gets built, that doesn’t much decrease the traffic to the other grocery store to the point that it would close down.
The only problem is property developers marketing a new neighbourhood that only has a Whole Foods as being “close to a grocery store”, and people believing them and moving there. That Whole Foods was probably already there before the neighbourhood was, serving as an outlet to travel to for the larger region that that the new neighbourhood is located in; but the other parts of the region were being served by grocery stores located closer to them, and this new neighbourhood actually doesn’t have one of those.
What do you regard as the grocery section?
I go to the grocery store weekly and all I buy, pretty much, are bread, dairy, and produce.
Do you mean stuff like breakfast cereal and peanut butter?
>I get the impression it caters to people for whom cooking for themselves is a special occasion and not a daily thing.
I'm really confused, you think WF caters to people who don't cook for themselves, but you feel like it's missing condiments and sauces? That's weird, people who cook for themselves probably aren't looking to smother their food with ketchup.
https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/about-our-products/product-...
Most sales, and particularly BOGO are loss-leaders to get people to sign up for the loyalty card. That's where the money comes from because now we have your phone number and email address and purchase history to sell. Every one of those coupons that prints on the receipt is a paid advertisement. CVS gains by promoting those products. By gamifying coupon use. And those ExtraBuck coupons aren't discounts but more like short-term microloans that CVS keeps the interest on.
All sorts of folks buy from CVS, mostly stuff on sale but not always. Moms with a sick child and elderly folks in to get medicines are a good chunk of the customers. Folks without transportation are a few people, sure. In one store, some of the food traffic was simply because we were in a small town with limited groceries: Some of the food was nearly as cheap as the local places. We got a boost of traffic because of football games at a college about 25 minutes away.
The second store was a 24 hour store, and though the town had 24 hour grocery stores, they weren't next to us at night. We were not far from a small college as well. And again, same sorts of customers, usually picking up one or two things.
Even more extra bonus points on holidays, since we were always open (at both stores). I think people figured we'd be less busy.
Whole Foods 365 brand organic milk is slightly cheaper than CVS, but it's a slightly longer walk and has longer lines and is in a basement, so I tend not to bother. (I probably should go there more often.)
It's contrary to advertisments who make you think you are saving money by buying "cheap processed foods".
Why so?
Edit: essentially, a lot of the time it is expensive to be poor.
I drive to one or more grocery stores infrequently to get what I want. Buy quality food and freeze/store it in my large house. Garden provides some more. Waste is composted and feeds the gardens.
Meals cost me a buck or two to prepare from my plentiful stock. All because I can afford to. Food is a negligible fraction of my budget.
You can do that kind of thing when you are relatively settled and have roots and connections in a community, and the know-how to do all that home-making. We didn't have any money, but we were rich in a lot of other ways. If you are isolated and precarious, living reactively day-to-day, it makes something that is already hard nigh on impossible.
It's the old adage about it being expensive to be poor, only in reverse.
Kroger used to be so bad in our neighborhood that we drove 30 minutes (past upscale krogers) because their business model of abusing stranded populations was abhorrent.
You plan your trip to take advantage of transfer tickets and such. Sometimes you walk a mile or two or you bike or you bum a ride from someone.
Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t plan and are helpless.
Sure it’s not ideal and I prefer being able to shop ad hoc at my leisure, no doubt. But when I had to I made do.
Chronic stress (such as from financial stress and working multiple jobs) actually does severely impact your executive function and decision-making ability. It's hard to make dispassionate decisions when you're exhausted and scared. There's been studies about it.
Obviously it's possible to overcome that, and some people are better at it than others. But the burden is real. When you're coming off a double shift, it's really hard to make the decision to spend an extra 45 minutes walking round-trip, or two hours hopping on and off buses, when you could just hit the Walgreen's near your apartment and get home to your family.
obviously not. But anecdotally what I see where I live is that it is a large enough inconvenience that it makes an impact. If you work 8 hours, then have to spend 2-3 hours getting groceries you already have a 10-11 hour day not counting any other commuting you need to do. What if you have kids you need to get off a bus from school?
trying to blanket say anyone not willing to make that trip just isn't trying isn't fair.
It is well documented that low-income areas have less access to good education, healthcare, and other facilities. blaming the residents doesn't help them improve their quality of life. Not everyone will make it out of that.
We’re not making two hour trips every day after work for food. No poor person I knew did that when I was poor. I did it mostly on weekends when there was lots of time.
But being poor DOES mean lowered efficiency with respect to an astonishing number of steps involved to achieve the desired outcome.
And when you have enough of these lowered efficiencies at one time and they begin to compound like interest...
Not always a pretty picture.
it kinda does though.
The effects of financial stress on your mental wellbeing are pretty well documented and can manifest in ways such as inability to focus/concentrate, chronic fatigue, spotty memory from stress etc.