At this time of year, the first Whole Foods Market in Idaho, population roughly 1.6 million, sells products from some 60 local vendors, including turkeys from the A+ Ranch that are billed as organic and certified as raised under humane conditions.
Two years ago, when Whole Foods announced that it wanted to expand to 1,000 stores from a little more than 300 and open in places where it was assumed that consumers had never heard of kale and wouldn’t dream of spending $6 for a pound of humanely raised pork, some investors scoffed. Its traditional grocery store competitors snickered at the strategy. And even those on Wall Street enamoured with the chain’s success expressed doubts that its forays inland into smaller, less urban markets would succeed.
Like most grocery chains, Whole Foods does not release sales data on individual stores. But two years after disclosing its plans, it turns out that more shoppers do want, say, soda pop with no artificial colouring and flavouring and speciality meats, more than the experts had banked on. Cities like this one with its 212,000 residents, many of them college students and migrants from the cities where Whole Foods raised the bar on the grocery business, are embracing the company with an enthusiasm that has confounded the naysayers, propelled its stock price to heady highs and surprised even its executives.
“This never would work in the eastern part of the state,” said Amy Larson, a food writer and blogger who lives in Boise. “They really did their best to make sure this was the right place for them and then to learn the community once they had decided to come.”
Several people noted the influence of Whole Foods here on the city’s other grocery stores, whose sales dipped at first. Albertsons spruced up three stores in the neighbourhoods around Whole Foods, adding a broader variety of organic and “natural” products and giving its produce departments a makeover. It also lowered prices on more than 1,600 items, including staples like eggs, milk and bananas.
