People who shop at Whole Foods expect to get higher-quality food in exchange for paying significantly higher prices. But when it comes to poultry and meat, at least, consolidation in the industry and broadly rising standards mean the same products that Whole Foods sells are increasingly available at conventional supermarket chains for a lot less money, reports Bloomberg.
Indeed, “The biggest difference between the store-brand chickens at Whole Foods and what’s for sale at another supermarket is, in many cases, the sticker price itself,” says Bloomberg. “A shopper on a recent visit could pay $2.49 per pound for antibiotic-free thighs with a Whole Foods label touting ‘no added solutions or injections.’ Perdue’s Harvestland-branded poultry — no antibiotics, air-chilled — cost just $1.99 per pound at an unremarkable Key Food supermarket just a few blocks away. The similarities don’t stop there: In this case, the chicken under the 365 Everyday Value store-brand label at Whole Foods was raised by a Perdue farmer and slaughtered in the same Perdue plant as its Harvestland cousin, although a shopper likely wouldn’t be aware of that fact.”
“What used to be more unique” to natural food retailers “has now become really par for the course, certainly among your larger chains and your progressive grocers,” David Sprinkle, researcher director at Packaged Facts, a market-research firm, told Bloomberg. “When other chains, including bigger chains, started doing natural and organic, well, then suddenly Whole Foods was competing with Kroger, Wegmans, Costco.”
Consolidation has helped drive this standardization. “Perdue, for instance, acquired the no-antibiotics Coleman Natural Foods in 2011 and has since converted 95 percent of its poultry operations to antibiotic-free production.” The same thing has happened with beef, says Bloomberg. “Open Prairie Natural Angus, a brand sold at Whole Foods, is produced by Tyson Foods Inc. from cattle raised without antibiotics or added hormones.”