I live in what is arguably one of the great intellectual nerve centers of the world. The Gardner and Fine Arts Museums are a short walk away. As is the greatest single collection of hospitals and medical research in the world. My house is tucked in between Boston University on one side and Northeastern on the other. Boston College is only modestly further away, as is Harvard and MIT. My nephew stayed at our house one summer so he could go to Berklee School of Music. To do so he had to walk by the New England Conservatory.
Our little neighborhood is something of a commercial throw-back. Two Italian brothers run a hair salon down the block. There’s a old fashioned diner called the “Busy Bee” where you can get grease mainlined into your blood stream thanks to a cranky waitress who has been their since before I was born. There’s even an independent hardware store.
When we moved in a decade ago, you had to get in our car to find a grocery store. Near BU there’s a Shaw’s Super Store. And if you drive in pretty much any direction you will eventually find a Whole Foods. But if you want to walk, you were out of luck save for a couple of poorly run convenience stores.
There was a big commercial space that was a Chinese and then Italian restaurant one block away from us. We literally never a soul eat there. Finally, it turned over and became Johnny’s Foodmaster. Johnny’s is a full service grocery store with no frills. The only other one I have ever been in is located in Charlestown, not a likely site for a Whole Foods.
Don’t get me wrong, the Johnny’s is quirky. I am not about to consume their homemade deli specials. And the checkout woman has this oddly high-pitched voice and overly long straight hair that gives the faint impression of the daughter in the Munsters (though her hair is red instead of black her eyes bug out and she is cheery in a way that always makes me think she is excited about sucking my blood).
I’m the kind of dad and husband who sometimes does the shopping and shares the cooking. Having been a single dad with two little kids for six years prior to remarrying I am all about stocking the house with stuff the kids like and cooking simple meals I know they will eat. And nothing pisses me off more than paying $5 for a tiny little box of blueberries.
I have come to love my Johnny’s, even the creepy check out gal from Nightmare on Elm Street. I have added it up and the price of shopping at Johnny’s is roughly half what the same stuff would cost me at Whole Foods. I am not kidding. And the produce is just as good, at times even better. The place is a compact little footprint so I don’t get lost like I do inside the Shaw’s Mega Store. And I can walk.
I’ve spent enough time in Italy to understand the importance of buying locally produced food in season from merchants who specialize what they are good at. In my own little Brookline way, I’ve come up with a routine that works for me. A couple years ago we also got a specialty meat store that is amazing. So I buy my meat there and go to the Johnny’s. If I am desperate for some organic something I got to the Trader Joe’s (located next to the meat store in Coolidge Corner). I no longer get in the car and go to Whole Foods or Shaws. It’s a conscious decision to live a simpler, healthier life for my family and me.
Then the unthinkable happened. I was in line with a massive order at the Johnny’s yesterday when the Munster daughter started talking to herself (she also speaks to herself at a high rate of speed in a voice that makes you think she might very well have a body somewhere in a closet at home) about whether or not she would come back to work after the end of November. I broke into her self-discussion to ask why she would ever consider leaving such a plum job.
“Because Whole Foods has bought the store,” she replied with a look of horror which was matched only my own.
Those bastards.
Soon I won’t be able to buy Oreos, regular toilet paper, and Diet Coke down the block. Instead of Eddies Reduced Fat Ice Cream (which I consume by the half gallon) I am going to have to buy some whole milk organic ice cream that costs twice as much and will not allow me to continue my delusion of ice cream being some kind of evening vitamin without calories. And I will be forced to buy $5 blueberries and little plastic cups of mixed fruit for $10. The Yogurt selection will be modestly better but that is hardly a fair trade.
“Yeah they are shutting down November 30th,” my favorite little vampire went on as if speaking to herself instead of me. “But they aren’t reopening until the fall of 2013. What do you do for a whole year with a store that’s already perfect?”
Indeed.
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I hate Whole Foods they really did me wrong I recently got a job with them and i ended up having to quit due to my moms kidneys failing. When I quit I explained the reason and they said they were fine. My mom got better we found out it was her medicines and she got better. I went to go back to my job and I was treated so badly my supervisors were so horrible to me and told me I was basically blackballed from ever working here. I tried to explain why and they showed no sympathy or… Read more »
We use the Albany food co-op, since my wife works at the university there– at least we use it sometimes– mainly for speciality items we can’t get at the local PriceChopper. I tease her that “organic” means compounds based on carbon chains (any food, in other words.) The food co-op lets non-members shop there, but I think we pay more. In reading Polan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I was struck that he’s not sure that “organic” is organic all of the time (in the sense of being so certified.)
I will say that my frame for this discussion is growing up in Amherst where we had a food cooperative called the Yellow Sun where I worked from the time I could walk. I was sometimes confused by the gender reversal (men wore long hair and women crew cuts) but I understood the importance of good organic food produced locally and sold through a cooperative. Whole Foods it was NOT.
Living halfway between Albany and Utica (I stopped being a Boston metrosouth professor in May,) I wish we had a Whole Foods near here. I used to love staying in Brookline because of the one there. I haven’t decided whether the “local food” movement is a good idea or nonsense. One suspects that economies of scale benefit the poor (if supermarkets haven’t been “redlined” out of their neighborhoods, of course,) even if foods are bulk-shipped a long ways. So local food may be an affectation of the liberal affluent. Or not. I can certainly sympathize with not wanting to see… Read more »
I’m happy to see the Johnny’s in my neighborhood in Somerville leave. It costs WAY more to shop there than it does at the market basket just a few blocks away. The Johnny’s here is wheat moth infested and the produce is limp and expensive. The carpeted floors make the whole place smell. Of course I hope the whole foods hires the people who currently work there. I think they are actually pretty good at that from what I hear- hiring people from the neighborhood. I think the 365 brand is pretty competitive and if people want to buy their… Read more »
I mostly avoid the Whole Foods, because I’m lucky enough to have better options, closer. It seems that their marketing strategy, from back when they started eating their competition whole (remember Bread & Circus?) has been to follow Walmart’s lead. And we can see what everyday low prices got us. It killed all the little stores you could walk to, in towns all over the country. If you want your little town to continue thriving, you have to support those weird little stores. And even when you do, sometimes you still lose them. It sucks like a vampire.
And that is why the folks small areas will fight tooth and nail against a WalMart coming into the area. They will snuff out the small fries with their low prices and as soon as the dust settles and they are the last one standing you can bet the prices magically start to go back up. I’ve been slowly weening myself off of WalMart over the last few months. The key is to remember that when comparing WalMart’s special deals/sales to those of other stores, the other stores usually win out, at least in my experience. For example yesterday I… Read more »
As a vegetarian-turned-vegan-turned-vegetarian, and a persistent epicurean, Whole Foods is one of the only options for locating some of my kitchen staples — for example, nutritional yeast — and providing a selection of new delicacies for the curious palate. Many times, it’s also the only option for one-stop-shopping convenience — particularly for those of us who live in big cities and people in smaller towns with less access to “natural” and “organic” products. On the other hand, as you point out, Whole Foods products tend to be more expensive — though if you factor in time as an expense, that… Read more »