Consumer Maven

Whole Foods Bans Plastic Bags

This is not too surprising for anyone who shops there, since the signs (literally) have been prominently displayed in the check out areas for months.   As plastic bags go, theirs was by far one of the best, so much so that it has been easy to reuse them.  They fold nicely and last awhile so I would carry a few with me.  I've also rescued a few people who lost their groceries on the sidewalk when the cheaper grade plastic bags they had split open, often just from the short distance from their cars to their homes.

So I have to wonder, is the issue with plastic bags just about biodegradable issues, or is it overconsumption?  We as a people probably use far too many plastic bags, because they are too small, too weak to carry many heavy items, too icky to fold up carefully.  Plastic bags have their place - in inclement weather your grocery bag won't disintegrate while you wait for at train or bus.  Your frozen foods won't break a hole though your grocery bag, etc.  However, so many people use plastic bags with abandonment.  I've seen people at the Jewel Self Check out grab many extra bags, for what purpose, who knows, since they've already bagged their groceries.  I've also seen people at the Self Check out who don't even bother with a plastic bag - at least there's some balance.

If nothing else, the one good thing about Whole Foods policy announcement is that it helps open more dialog up about the overuse of plastic bags, and personal responsibility in their use and disposal, which is really the major issue here.  The irony here is that I have never seen a Whole Foods plastic bag adorning the urban landscape, hanging from trees or blowing down streets.  Maybe because their bags were actually re-usable, versus the ones that had very little value in the first place.  In any event, banning the plastic bag has created a space for many people to think, to discuss and to look at their own habits of plastic consumption.

On the shopping side of life, the Whole Foods plasticized bag replacement, available for 99 cents, is a bright and fun shopper!

How was your shopping experience?

A few weeks ago I was at my local Whole Foods when, at the checkout, the cashier looked at me and said, 'And how was your shopping experience?'  I nearly dropped my organically raised produce when he said that.  Oh ohhhh, have I been busted???  Because the Consumer Maven is all about assessing the customer's shopping experience, it almost seemed like a kowinkydinky moment.  Ironically, just a month before this they had this one woman cashier who had the personality of a twice dead zombie and the warmth to go with it.  I dealt with her once and vowed never to go through her line ever, even if it there were no people in it and every other line was 20+ deep.  Fortunately she seems to have left for the night of the living dead.

So back to the question, "How was your shopping experience?"  Lately at "my" Whole Foods, it's been very good.  In the past, what struck me was that while the seperate service areas such as fish, meats, supplements, etc. were very service oriented, the customer service and cashier areas had been somewhat spotty and occasionally unpleasant.  So far whatever changes that had been made about half a year ago seem to be, with the exception of the zombie woman, providing a good customer service level, one that we'd expect for a store whose claim to fame is higher standards.  In fact, my last few experiences at the customer service desk were great, as have been the cashier areas. 

It is interesting that this is a question that some stores and business should dare not ask unless they are truly prepared to stand behind change.  At least at Whole Foods, they had the guts to ask it.

Whole Foods Market Alternatives fresh from Jewel

I live on the north side of Chicago and shop at Whole Foods, Trader Joes and Jewel for food and household supplies.   In another time in Chicago, I used to be able to go to an assortment of natural foods stores, but for those of us in Chicago, for the most part, Whole Foods ate up all their natural foods grocer competition and now they are the only game in town.  Or they have been.

Over the past several years, I've been delighted to find that my local Jewel carried a decent selection of organic produce, especially the Earthbound Organics line.  Because of dietary restrictions, there was a time where I used to lament that if I were locked in Jewel for a week I'd starve.  That, I am happy to say, is no longer true.  The proof is in the fact that I often need to take either my Zuca Cart or horrors, even my bubba cart because Jewel is now blessedly providing much in the way of food shopping alternatives for even fussy shoppers like me. 

There I've been able to buy my organic vegetables, salad materials, some fruit, dairy and soy products, eggs, dried cereal, snacks, and now chicken!  For anyone who hasn't been in a Jewel lately, they've reorganized (again) and thankfully gone back to segregating most of their natural and organic foods from the conventional stuff.  In my "small" Jewel, in a section called, "Wild Harvest," there are two full aisles of dry goods, followed by another aisle of refrigerated goods (dairy but not eggs), and the store also carries some natural and organic breads in the standard bread aisle.  There are also organic and natural (preservative and artificial additive free, just for clarification) frozen foods that include both desserts and entrees, as well as gluten free foods!!

Mostly out of curiosity, I just picked up a package of their Wild Harvest boneless chicken.  My impressions when I brought this home was that it was very, very  well packaged.  For one, the outer plastic packaging was thicker and leak proof, making using a plastic bag around it unnecessary.  Inside, the chicken was placed in a plastic tray.  Although maybe not the most environmentally sensitive use of packaging, with all the recycling options in Chicago this just requires it to be rinsed/washed off.  What it does do from a consumer standpoint is keep the chicken pieces intact better and not create a little bio-bacterial farm that seems to occur when stores use a plastic/cotton pad underneath to soak up the difference.

I also could not help but notice that the chicken didn't smell, and I mean that in a nice way.  Lately my chicken from Whole Foods has an odor that chicken gets when it begins to obviously deteriorate.  This occurs even when I purchase it the same day I use it.  I've heard that when the life energy level of a store or business (or even a home) is "low" then foods will tend to rot or deteriorate quickly.  Who would have ever thought that this could happen more at Whole Foods versus my local Jewel?  Then again, maybe something is a little rotten at the top of my favorite grocer.

Whole Foods, Part Inconsistency and that's a good thing!

As a north side Chicagoan, I usually go to the Lake View Whole Foods.  I've been a Whole Foods shopper since they first opened in Chicago.  At one time, when friends or relatives would drive me to the store, I used to always go to the North Avenue store until about 1999/2000.  I liked that store, both for its selection and the management.  While doing a management project in my MBA program, I had met the Regional President and the Regional Vice President (whose name I still remember, Bob Marks, who came from their Fresh Fields buy out).   From around 2000 I started shopping only at the Lake View store, both due to it's closeness in terms of public transportation for me, and the fact that the North Avenue store started to be a not so pleasant experience, especially at the checkout.  The management that I had known back then had left, and the management that came in seemed to contribute to a downward spiral in keeping the energy in the North avenue store "up" and feeling good.  With that in mind, it was not an incentive to even go in there, much less shop there.

I was at the North Avenue store today, and I was really quite happy to see how things have changed for the better.   While I was looking for toothpaste, an employee gave me a friendly "hello" - not the robotic stuff I get at "my" Whole Foods in Lake View, but a genuine, (like Trader Joe's) type of greeting, where the person's energy is open and not closed.  Wow, I was thinking to myself... at least one of the three stores in Chicago has a friendly person in it.  I have to admit that when I first came through the doors of my long missed store, I felt a different energy than I remembered from before.  I momentarily thought that either they hired Dr. Phyllis Light (she does business energy clearings and helps to raise the energy and conciousness in a space to a higher place) or they just had a major change in personnel since I've been there last. 

My mother wanted me to pick up some dried food items, and I could not find it, despite several roam arounds in the appropriate place.  I finally asked one of the guys who was trying to stock some shelves.  He suggested I wait or shop in the vicinity while he goes to find out where it was, and said he didn't want to drag me all over the store.  Since I was bundled up from the cold (having to take two busses and trains), I really appreciated it.  When I returned, he told me where the item was, and walked me over to the section.  I rarely find people who have energy that feels genuinely kind, especially when interupting them while they are trying to do their job, so I was more than floored by this experience.  I was also feeling good that I had one good and one stellar people experiences while shopping at this Whole Foods.  Then came the telltale checkout.  The cashier was a young, funky kind of guy who was on the fun side.  This was the kind of cashier that I used to enjoy having as my last shopping experience when I'd go to the Lake View store (before things got depressing).  I left the store feeling good that at least this location in Chicago hasn't lost its soul.  One out of three isn't great, but it's better than 0:0.