When Whole Foods, “the world’s leader in organic and natural foods” with 360 stores, opened a store in Detroit in June 2013, top executives said they wanted to reach “all of Detroit” with lower prices and to encourage healthier diets. At Slate, writer Tracie McMillan says “the prices simply aren’t low enough to work” for poor families. McMillan compared a shopping list of 50 items at Whole Foods and at King Cole, a neighborhood grocer, and says King Cole’s total was 21 percent lower than Whole Foods.
McMillan says Whole Foods’ organic products were cheaper or lower in price than other stores, its packaged goods, such as pasta sauce, were priced competitively but a market basket of produce, meat and dairy was noticeably more expensive. For the story, McMillan spoke repeatedly to leaders of the grocery chain and followed two families for a year to chronicle their experiences.
The store is successful by some measurements. Sales are twice as large as expected and Whole Foods says sales through the food stamp program was five or six times larger than the chain’s average. McMillan estimates 5-12 percent of sales go to food stamp customers in a city where 38 percent of residents are enrolled in the federal program.
Slate’s story, produced in partnership with Food and Environment Reporting Network, is available here. Information about FERN is available here.