<story><title>Fears grow over &apos;food swamps&apos; as drugstores outsell major grocers</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/04/food-swamps-cvs-outsells-trader-joes-whole-foods-processed-shopping</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>p49k</author><text>Assuming this is true: If you visit WF, your entire shopping needs won’t be met by the available 365-branded foods, which means you’ll either have to shop at multiple stores (extremely difficult if you are poor) or buy the remaining products at severely marked up prices, negating any savings the 365-brands products might have offered. In particular, produce, meats and other fresh products are absurdly marked up in WF.</text></item><item><author>momokoko</author><text>This is a massive misconception and nicely illustrates how much people are influenced by branding and merchandising. Whole foods 365 brand is actually cheaper than many grocery store generics. The data is available online if you want to explore this further.</text></item><item><author>dsfyu404ed</author><text>Where real estate is expensive the only grocery stores that can stay afloat are fat margin chains that cater to upscale customers.  The poor people are then forced to shop at CVS or wherever, sure it&amp;#x27;s more expensive than Walmart or a proper grocery store but it&amp;#x27;s still cheaper than whole paycheck.&lt;p&gt;WF (or Trader Joes for that matter) simply doesn&amp;#x27;t sell value priced versions of a lot of items.  CVS will sell it at a ripoff.  It probably comes out close to a wash put poor people are poor, not stupid.  If the numbers worked out in favor of WF they would be shopping there.  Also, nobody(TM) does their entire shopping at CVS.  People will drag their asses elsewhere on a regular basis to buy certain items that are cheap.  Many convenience stores, bodegas, etc. will sell a couple staples or classes of items dirt cheap in order to attract business.  You buy your regular items where they are cheap (e.g. $1.50&amp;#x2F;gal brand name milk from the bodega that buys about to expire milk from a restaurant supplier for pennies and passes on the savings to create foot traffic) and buy everything else at CVS.</text></item><item><author>AdmiralAsshat</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a pity, because doing grocery shopping at CVS is like doing grocery shopping at a gas station &amp;#x2F; convenience mart:  there&amp;#x27;s a $1-3 markup on damn near everything. And I imagine the people that are forced to shop at a drugstore are probably poor to begin with, so, that hits them even worse.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>momokoko</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; your entire shopping needs won’t be met by the available 365-branded foods&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely false. That is the entire stated purpose of the 365 brand. What 365 does not cover is produce and meat. Meat is definitely more expensive at Whole Foods as they do not use it as a loss leader like other stores. I also sometimes wonder if one of the founders being vegan had something to do with that. Produce at WF is definitely about merchandising. The lower priced produced is very well hidden.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; shop at multiple stores (extremely difficult if you are poor)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Poor people don&amp;#x27;t have legs? I was poor for most of my life. I rode a bicycle to the grocery store. And the 365 brand stuff is mostly non-perishables. You can shop for non-perishables every couple of weeks.&lt;p&gt;Admit it. You just do not like the brand and identity the Whole Foods represents. It has nothing to do with the actual products or prices.</text></comment>
<story><title>Fears grow over &apos;food swamps&apos; as drugstores outsell major grocers</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/04/food-swamps-cvs-outsells-trader-joes-whole-foods-processed-shopping</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>p49k</author><text>Assuming this is true: If you visit WF, your entire shopping needs won’t be met by the available 365-branded foods, which means you’ll either have to shop at multiple stores (extremely difficult if you are poor) or buy the remaining products at severely marked up prices, negating any savings the 365-brands products might have offered. In particular, produce, meats and other fresh products are absurdly marked up in WF.</text></item><item><author>momokoko</author><text>This is a massive misconception and nicely illustrates how much people are influenced by branding and merchandising. Whole foods 365 brand is actually cheaper than many grocery store generics. The data is available online if you want to explore this further.</text></item><item><author>dsfyu404ed</author><text>Where real estate is expensive the only grocery stores that can stay afloat are fat margin chains that cater to upscale customers.  The poor people are then forced to shop at CVS or wherever, sure it&amp;#x27;s more expensive than Walmart or a proper grocery store but it&amp;#x27;s still cheaper than whole paycheck.&lt;p&gt;WF (or Trader Joes for that matter) simply doesn&amp;#x27;t sell value priced versions of a lot of items.  CVS will sell it at a ripoff.  It probably comes out close to a wash put poor people are poor, not stupid.  If the numbers worked out in favor of WF they would be shopping there.  Also, nobody(TM) does their entire shopping at CVS.  People will drag their asses elsewhere on a regular basis to buy certain items that are cheap.  Many convenience stores, bodegas, etc. will sell a couple staples or classes of items dirt cheap in order to attract business.  You buy your regular items where they are cheap (e.g. $1.50&amp;#x2F;gal brand name milk from the bodega that buys about to expire milk from a restaurant supplier for pennies and passes on the savings to create foot traffic) and buy everything else at CVS.</text></item><item><author>AdmiralAsshat</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a pity, because doing grocery shopping at CVS is like doing grocery shopping at a gas station &amp;#x2F; convenience mart:  there&amp;#x27;s a $1-3 markup on damn near everything. And I imagine the people that are forced to shop at a drugstore are probably poor to begin with, so, that hits them even worse.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>derefr</author><text>&amp;gt; extremely difficult if you’re poor&lt;p&gt;I mean, I live in an area where there’s a Whole Foods within two blocks’ walking distance of two other grocery stores (one mid-market, one down-market.)&lt;p&gt;I think this isn’t actually that uncommon; people don’t see Whole Foods as actually satisfying the demand for “a grocery store” in an area (as it doesn’t carry many of the things people expect a larger grocery store to carry—it may have decent produce, deli, bakery, etc. sections, but its &lt;i&gt;grocery&lt;/i&gt; section is rather lacking in anything other than up-market “bougie” brands) so if there’s an existing other grocery store, and then a Whole Foods also gets built, that doesn’t much decrease the traffic to the other grocery store to the point that it would close down.&lt;p&gt;The only problem is property developers marketing a new neighbourhood that &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; has a Whole Foods as being “close to a grocery store”, and people believing them and moving there. That Whole Foods was probably already there before the neighbourhood was, serving as an outlet to travel to for the larger region that that the new neighbourhood is located in; but the other parts of the region were being served by &lt;i&gt;grocery stores&lt;/i&gt; located closer to them, and this new neighbourhood actually doesn’t have one of those.</text></comment>