I visited Whole Foods located in
Yorkville in November, on a Friday night shortly after the average person’s
workday ends. As a result, the grocery store was quite busy, with a large
number of people getting their evening shopping done. I noticed that the
majority of people shopping appeared to be young professionals—no one that
immediately stood out as a student or person of a lower economic class seemed
to be shopping there, despite its close proximity to the University of Toronto.
Structurally,
Whole Foods seemed like most other grocery stores; there were aisles organized
by food product type, a bakery, meat and seafood section, etc. Notably, unlike
other grocery stores, there was a large section dedicated to ‘natural’ or ‘organic’
products such as hair colouring, soaps, clothing, beauty products, etc. While
often grocery stores do have these sections, especially large ones, this was
one of the first instances where I saw one dedicated to these products coming
from an organic and all-natural standpoint outside of stores that are entirely
marketed on their organic nature. There was also a focus on signage indicating
towards products, be they health products or food products, which are ‘local’
to the area around Toronto. The whole grocery store, therefore, came across as
a sort of pro-health, pro-local place, where people go to shop to get the
highest quality goods for above-average prices. This makes sense given the store’s
location in Yorkville, one of Toronto’s most ‘hip’ upper-class neighbourhoods,
with the store being part of a complex that includes many high-end retail
stores as well.
As a result I
was struck by this feeling that the grocery store was at odds with itself—on the
one hand, it was trying to be ‘pro-local’ and healthy and organic, etc., while
still closely tying itself to a very commercial, high-end economic environment.
The dichotomy was rather prevalent the entire time I was there. As well, given
that as a student my funds are somewhat limited, I felt almost like an outsider
while I was inside the Whole Foods. I did not feel like I was the market they
were targeting, and as a result was almost overwhelmed by the environment. I
felt distinctly out of place there, which has never happened to me in a grocery
store.
Whole
Foods is a grocery store chain that bases itself entirely around the notion of
selling products that meet their self-made standards (Whole Foods Website). Indeed,
they market themselves on this notion that the stores will only sell products
that meet their standards for animal welfare, seafood sustainability, etc. and
also have a focus on trying to promote and sell products that are created
locally in order to help out the ‘neighbourhoods’ that each store tries to
become a part of (Whole Foods Website). As a result of all this, Whole Foods
generally claims that all of their products are entirely organic and
pro-consumer in nature (Whole Foods).
Whole
Foods is also notably opposed to GMOs (genetically modified organisms), and
looking through their website results in finding a page dedicated entirely to
trying to inform and educate people about GMOs and transparency in regards to
products that include GMOs. This does not mean, as the website sort of makes
clear, mean that Whole Foods does not sell products that include GMOs, but
instead that they are trying to be more transparent about what does and does
not contain GMOs for the sake of the customer. Whole Foods also claims to be at
the forefront of attempting to make vendors become accountable for properly labelling
whether or not their food meets non-GMO standards, “…paving the way for those
who follow” (Whole Foods Website).
Whole
Foods also claims to try to support local businesses and sell their products,
with some regions having a dedicated ‘forager’ whose job is to go around to the
local production areas around a Whole Foods location to try to find local
products that meets the grocery store’s standards (Langois). However, each
region is different (as apparently most Whole Foods regions are fairly
autonomous in terms of how they run and product stock) and so some stores will
not necessarily have as many local products as others, but the fact that some
have a dedicated vested interest in bringing local business into their fold
(again, assuming the local business can meet their product standards) shows that,
at least on the surface, Whole Foods is attempting to be a grocery store that
ties city and country together.
This
notion of a city-based grocery store (from examining the ‘Find a Store’ map on
the Whole Foods website, it appears as though most Whole Foods locations are in
major city centres) fits neatly into William Chronon’s narrative of commodity
chains and cities creating hinterlands. Essentially, Chronon argues throughout
his entire book that the development of large urban centres is not separate
from the development of the surrounding ‘countryside,’ but instead symbiotic,
with cities creating hinterlands as they develop (Chronon 1991:264). This is a
sort of twin birth, where cities impose a new nature around the surrounding areas
in order to continue to grow and prosper, and it is a very tangled,
inter-connected system of commodity chains (where the livelihoods of both the
city and the hinterlands are reliant on one another—one to create products and
one to consume them) (1991:264).
This
seems to be what Whole Foods tries to encourage, to some extent, at each of its
locations and certainly from what I observed in its Yorkville location. As I
walked through the store I would consistently see signs advertising locally-produced
products, such as health products (local bar soap is one such product that
comes to mind) and food products beyond just fruits and vegetables but
including baked goods as well (there was one display of locally-made cookies
with a large “Local Treats” sign above it with a large arrow pointing down at
the display). As well, much of Whole Foods’ advertising on its website is
focused on tropes such as ‘helping out the little guy’ (small local businesses)
and promoting healthy, local foods for the benefit of both the local producer
and the city-based consumer. This is quite clearly a direct embodiment of
Chronon’s theories of commodity chains, where one can draw parallels to the
Yorkville (or Toronto as a whole) based buyer and local producers in the hinterlands
surrounding Toronto and Chicago and its surrounding hinterlands, which allowed
for the city to grow and prosper throughout the nineteenth century. However,
the Toronto Whole Foods-local hinterlands example is also different, in that
while the examples Cronon uses involve truly re-shaping the environment around
Chicago for Chicago’s benefit, Whole Foods seems to just be using what is already
available, rather than creating new hinterlands (1991:265).
As
well, Whole Foods has faced criticisms in the past in regards to how well it
really supports local producers. One article by Stacy Mitchell from 2007
discusses how Whole Foods tries to aggressively promote its own house brands,
which I absolutely noticed while I was at the Yorkville location (Mitchell
2007). Walking along the aisles, the products designed to stand out most
(largely through signage) are clearly the Whole Foods brand, and though as I
have stated there are many local displays, they were overshadowed by in-house
brand displays. As a result, this article claims that local producers who
create products that could compete with the Whole Foods brand products are
almost destined to fail due to Whole Foods putting an emphasis on their own
products at the expense of the ‘little guy’ (Mitchell 2007). As a whole, then,
Whole Foods seems to be contradicting itself in terms of its advertising. It
claims to support local commodity chains and bringing local products to
prominence in large urban settings, which in and of itself seems to be a fine
goal. However, in practice this is undermined by the fact that Whole Foods is
also seeking to make as much money as possible through selling its own,
non-local products. Is Whole Foods then truly helping foster Toronto’s
hinterlands? It seems that this is not truly clear, even though some effort is
apparent.
Works Cited:
Whole Foods Official Website, accessed at http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/values-matter.
Pages in particular Cited:
Cherie Langois. “Foraging for a Change.” Hobby Farms.com,
accessed at http://www.hobbyfarms.com/food-and-kitchen/whole-foods-local-forager.aspx
(no date is given for the article, though another website cited it as being
accessed in 2008).
William Cronon, 1991. Nature’s
Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. W.W. Norton and Company.
Stacy Mitchell, 2007. “Whole Foods Markup,” The Bollard.
Accessed at http://thebollard.com/2007/09/05/whole-foods-markup/.
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