Whole Foods/Whole Paycheck (1994)

Sun Aug 1 04:58:41 UTC 2004

Sorry for that double helping of "Texas Weiners." Nothing happened after twenty minutes, so I sent the message again. Of course, the second post was not blocked.

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WHOLE FOODS + WHOLE PAYCHECK--370 Google hits, 126 Google Groups hits

James Callan (an ADS-L reader) told me about the following slang name for Whole Foods market.

The HDAS had "Monkey Ward" for Montgomery Ward. How about this?

(GOOGLE GROUPS)
Re: Hot Mustard and Wasabi
... For Wasabi, I get the powdered stuff at Whole Paycheck, er, Whole Foods <g>. -paul p. -- In the Land of the Blind The One-Eyed Man is King
chi.eats - Feb 19, 1998 by paulp at enteract.com - View Thread (9 articles)

Re: Whole Foods
... charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Does anyone have any grocery alternatives to Whole Foods? ... They don't call it "Whole Paycheck" for nothing. ...
dfw.eats - May 31, 1997 by Satin Doll - View Thread (20 articles)

Re: Veggie Burgers
... they were delightful. Whole foods, aka Whole Paycheck has many, many virtues. However, low price is not among them. No matter what ...
dfw.eats - Nov 10, 1995 by Robert Wallace - View Thread (19 articles)

(NEXIS)
SHOW: Weekend Edition Saturday (12:00 Noon PM ET) - NPR
July 3, 2004 Saturday
LENGTH: 1069 words

HEADLINE: Charles Fishman talks about Whole Foods Market and organic products

ANCHORS: SUSAN STAMBERG

BODY:
SUSAN STAMBERG, host:

Whole Foods Market is the biggest organic and natural foods grocer in this country: 157 stores in 28 states, plus Canada and Great Britain. They are also an underwriter of NPR. Whole Foods has made healthy eating chic and it is catching. Industry giants like Dole have started to sell organic products. So have some major grocery chains. Charles Fishman profiled Whole Foods in the July issue of Fast Company magazine, and he joins us now from member station WUNC in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Hello to you.

Mr. CHARLES FISHMAN (Fast Company): Good morning.

STAMBERG: Organic and natural, you know, it used to be sort of cult and a little bit kooky. So how did Whole Foods succeed in changing that image?

Mr. FISHMAN: Well, the funny thing is Whole Foods, of course, started out as a little cult and kooky. The guys who started it--John Mackey's the CEO of the big mother ship company now. One of the things that they have done so beautifully starting with really their second and third store is they make grocery shopping a kind of an art. It's fun. Their stores are, and always have been, a pleasure to walk into. The merchandise is beautifully presented. It's good quality. And so they have eliminated the sort of big-box drudgery of grocery shopping in some ways.

STAMBERG: Yeah. They sort of created an adventure in food buying. But what about their impact now? Can you really link the appearance of organic products in regular, big-box grocery stores to the Whole Food people? After all, Americans are really--we're getting more health conscious; everybody's working out. We're eating better. So plenty of stores are catering to them. You can't just give the credit to Whole Foods.

Mr. FISHMAN: Well, I don't think you can just give the credit to Whole Foods, but I think Whole Foods deserves a lot of the credit for the fact that you can walk into mainstream grocery stores now. They tell you that they have 357 produce items available for sale that day and 37 of them are organic. Well, five years ago, they didn't--they not only didn't have the 37 items; they weren't bragging about them.

STAMBERG: Sure.

Mr. FISHMAN: The organic milk display at our local grocery store is bigger than the entire milk display at Whole Foods. Five years ago, you couldn't buy organic milk at our grocery store.

STAMBERG: Mr. Fishman, it may be true that all this organic stuff is popping up on everybody's grocery store shelves now. But you know what? It always costs more and that's the thing about Whole Foods. When you only shop there, that stuff is expensive.

Mr. FISHMAN: It is more expensive and the national nickname of Whole Foods--you go into any Whole Foods store in America, people refer to it as 'Whole Paycheck,' because if you--you can easily walk out with a single, brown grocery sack of groceries and a bill for $80. And most people actually are quite strategic about what they buy there. They sort of cherry-pick their cheese or their wine or their produce or their meat or some selection of those things because that stuff is organic and good quality, and they don't buy the ordinary stuff, conventional items.
(...)

(NEXIS)
Copyright 2003 Riverfront Times LLC
Riverfront Times (St. Louis, Missouri)

September 24, 2003 Wednesday

SECTION: Bestof/Food & Drink

LENGTH: 185 words

HEADLINE: Best Takeout Counter (Grocery Division)
Whole Foods Market

BODY:
Some people refer to the place as "Whole Paycheck," because you can spend five bucks a pound on organic green beans. But the takeout counter (or "prepared foods department") at Whole Foods is large, varied and never disappointing. Vegetarians and vegetarian-conscious souls can make a meal to-go as easily as the rest of us. Behind the glass cases, the array of grilled meats, salads, stir-fries, soups, chilled vegetables, sandwiches and sushi look fresh and inviting, much more so than the tubs of slaw and ambrosia dished out at some big supermarkets we won't mention in this space. There are few places where you can load up on sesame-crusted salmon, couscous salad or a brick-oven pizza. Whole Foods states that they use no artificial sweeteners, colors, flavors or synthetic preservatives in their food, but that they do use expeller-pressed oils, natural meats and organic foods when available. Adding to consumer confidence, all ingredients are clearly labeled. For the carnivores among us, Whole Foods dry-ages its own meats, and some of the flavorful steaks show up in the takeout section.

(NEXIS)
The San Francisco Chronicle

JANUARY 13, 2004, TUESDAY, FINAL EDITION

SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. B1

LENGTH: 1163 words

HEADLINE: Finally, SoMa gets a supermarket;

Whole Foods to open Wednesday on Fourth Street

SOURCE: Chronicle Staff Writer

BYLINE: Jenny Strasburg
(...)
On a store tour last week with The Chronicle, Megahan didn't wait for the company's unwelcome moniker "whole paycheck" to come up. He brought it up himself.

In aisles and bins stocked with gourmet cheeses, bulk fresh scallops, premium meats and other pricey fare, he said, the new store will be amply stocked with lower-priced, but still high-quality, private-label foods and personal-care products.

"One of the things we've been working on over the past several years is our value image," said Megahan, naming dairy and nonorganic produce as areas where Whole Foods touts its prices as competitive with larger, more moderate supermarket chains such as Safeway and Albertson's.

(NEXIS)
Copyright 2002 Minnesota Public Radio. All Rights Reserved
MARKETPLACE

SHOW: Marketplace (6:30 PM ET) - SYND

November 28, 2002 Thursday

LENGTH: 591 words

HEADLINE: Healthy organic food doesn't always go down easy

ANCHORS: DAVID BROWN

BODY:
DAVID BROWN, anchor:

Last year, the chain of Whole Foods grocery stores saw annual sales near $2 billion. In part, that reflects its upscale target demographic, but it also speaks volumes about the appeal of what used to be thought of as food for so-called alternative lifestyles. In a recent installment of the Loh Down, commentator Sandra Tsing-Loh confessed that the healthy stuff doesn't always go down easy, no matter how hard she tries.

SANDRA TSING-LOH:

I admit, once I turned 35, I began to feel, if not depressed, a little weary with life. How did I start giving my psyche a much-needed boost? By boycotting the big, garish chain supermarket two blocks away and turning my car refreshingly south to our newest track-lit, wood-paneled organic gourmet grocery boutique, Whole Foods. 'Yeah, whole paycheck foods,' a friend grumbled recently, which I ignored. Sure, you pay more, but we can't eat regular food like other people do. We more mature, evolved humans require bulgur wheat, 12-grain muffins, 11 grains being one too few, jicama instead of potato chips because jicama is a much more progressive vegetable.

(NEXIS)
Copyright 2002 The Oregonian
The Oregonian

October 25, 2002 Friday SUNRISE EDITION

SECTION: ARTS AND LIVING; Pg. 09

LENGTH: 309 words

HEADLINE: THE HOT SHEET

SOURCE: By GRANT BUTLER, The Oregonian
(...)
Whole Foods: We've heard all the lame "whole paycheck" jokes. You get what you pay for, pal. (1210 N.W. Couch St.; 503-525-4343)

(NEXIS)
Copyright 2002 P.G. Publishing Co.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)

October 17, 2002 Thursday SOONER EDITION

SECTION: FOOD, Pg.E-1

LENGTH: 1474 words

HEADLINE: WHOLE FOODS 'NATURAL' ADDITION FOR CITY

BYLINE: MARLENE PARRISH

BODY:
Today is opening day for Whole Foods Market. (...)

To start, many Pittsburgh products will be in the store. Artisan breads are supplied by Nick Ambeliotis' MediTerra bakery on the Parkway West. Bagels are made fresh daily at The Bagel Factory in Shadyside. Pierogies Plus makes the local favorites. Coffee is from Coffee Tree, and there's a search for a local supplier of fresh eggs. Umi, one of the restaurants of big Burrito Group, will run the daily sushi program. About 100 local Pittsburghers staff the store.

Loyal Whole Food customers in cities such as Seattle and Chicago have been known to call the store "Whole Paycheck."

"We hear that, but it's not true," says Dill. "You can shop here for groceries you can find in any category in any supermarket. The difference is about quality and standards. Our prices, however, are comparative or better than the local markets."

(FACTIVA)
Peter Roy. (president of Whole Foods Market Inc.) (Marketers of the Year '94)

Betsy Spethmann
6,999 words
14 November 1994
Brandweek
62
Vol. 35, No. 44, ISSN: 1064-4318
English
COPYRIGHT ADWEEK L.P. 1994

If it's true that you are what you eat, Americans are getting wholesome. That's brought Whole Foods Market, the archetype of the natural foods supermarket, into the center of shoppers' consciousness. All the trends in healthful eating and the politically correct notions of oneness with the earth and global villageship have aligned to make an oddball hippie tradition the slickest upscale trip of the '90s. By sticking to its mission of healthful food, local involvement and grassroots selling, Whole Foods has come to lead a trend without going trendy.

Natural foods markets have carved out a tiny $6.5 billion niche in the $350 billion food sales, and remains one of the fastest growing segments of food retailing. Whole Foods continues to lead the category, expanding nationally after naming Peter Roy its first company-wide president a year ago. Chairman-ceo John Mackey spun off the president title to focus the 14-year-old company's growth. That won't significantly change the company's highly praised decentralized operations, structured under six regional presidents with most management done locally at each of Whole Foods' 30-plus stores.

"Adding Peter as president does what we analysts like to see," said Dennis Van Zelfden, analyst with Rauscher Pierce Refsnes. "It beefs up the infrastructure as the chain grows. It's a good example of delegating authority so the company can grow more rapidly. It's a modest shift away from the decentralized structure."

The 1992 purchase of sixstore Bread & Circus brought some centralized programs to the chain, with local coordinators spreading merchandising ideas store-to-store. Distribution centers in California and Texas centralize purchasing, although there's a penchant for working with local producers.

The company hit sales of $322 million in fiscal '93, when acquisitions boosted it to 30 stores from 13 (strongholds are California, Texas, Massachusetts and North Carolina). It'll concentrate this year on building its infrastructure, opening only five stores, and next year add 10 to 12 stores. New markets: St. Paul, Philadelphia, Madison, Wis., Virginia and D.C. The company is said to be close to signing leases for stores in San Francisco and Manhattan.

In Chicago and D.C., Whole Foods competes directly with Fresh Fields, the only other sizeable natural foods supermarket chain. Polar opposites in philosophy and culture, the two bristle when they meet. Word is the companies fought like hell for the Georgetown location Whole Foods has leased for a summer/fall 1995 opening. Fresh Fields' new Chicago store, a mere two miles from Whole Foods' unit there, worried Whole Foods and analysts alike, but has barely dented Whole Foods' traffic.

"Their expansion plans are parallel: Whole Foods is going for denser, urban neighborhoods; Fresh Fields is firmly suburban. There's room tor both," said Matthew Patsky, analyst with Robertson, Stephens & Co.

More & Pop natural food stores get nervous when Whole Foods comes to town. Its size means more selection and better prices, stiff competition for tiny specialty stores. But Whole Foods' leverage with growers and distributors can benefit smaller competitors, lowering costs overall.

With upscale pricing that has earned Whole Foods the nickname "Whole Paycheck," the company is looking at ways to extend its mission of putting a free-range chicken in every pot. One insider said the company is working on a new store format for low-income neighborhoods, and ways to distribute produce to existing groceries in those areas.