Randomly Noted

The CEO of Whole Foods has come out and said that “Food is Health” – not “Food as Pleasure” – will be the retailer’s new focus for the future. (Check out the headlines on DJN!) Here’s a retailer whose stores are full of the most delectable confections imagineable telling us: “Tsk, Tsk! You shouldn’t be indulging.” It strikes me that this sudden new tilt toward austerity could harm Whole Foods and what it has come to stand for. Over the past several years, it worked mighty hard to imprint itself on customers’ minds as THE place to find the yummiest foods – fresh and packaged alike. Want a full-fat cheese cake topped with glazed fruits? Go to Whole Foods’ extensive bakery section. Want a thick steaming slab of homemade pizza with the dreamiest of toppings and cheese oozing off the sides? Try Whole Foods’s prepared food area. Broke but hungry for lunch? Drop by Whole Foods and try the free cheese-and-cracker samples, or the upscale tortilla chips and fancy salsa dip scattered around the store. No need for lunch now! But no – the chief executive officer, John Mackey, now tells us this is all wrong. We should be eating healthy. Food’s not fun, it keeps us alive. We’ll wait and see if Whole Foods actually changes its tempting food line-up, scuttling the tasty stuff in favor of actual whole foods. If the profit motive prevails, it will simply drape its normal inventory in a health-food marketing message. A genuine and dramatic inventory shift could send customers running back to old-fashioned supermarkets. Yeah, we eat because we have to – but we eat delicious food because we want to. And let’s not forget that good food is an affordable luxury of the sort Americans just might not want to forego as the economy recovers.