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Comment by DiabloD3 | Hacker News Reader

So, where I live, we don't have things like Whole Foods and Sprouts. We have a tiny little specialty store in town that carries a very small amount of interesting, but expensive, organic and whatnot brands (but almost invariably, not what I'm looking for, but they're always willing to order it and sell it to me for far more than I can just order online for)....

I've seen people both worship and shit on Whole Foods, have seen Sprouts described as a "Whole Foods that didn't sell its soul to Wall Street", and I've heard Trader Joes described as "half a grocery store, so you can't do all your shopping there, but its the half you want".

We have two national chains in town with big stores, a couple smaller quasi-chains (IGA, etc), and a Super Walmart, so its not like its some out of the place hole in the wall....

So, what's the draw of Whole Foods (and by extension, Sprouts and the other clones)?

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The draw imo is the following: you try to find e.g. a tortilla at 'average big chain supermarket' without any hydrogenated oils, and it's going to take 20 minutes of reading ingredients, and even then maybe there just aren't any. At Trader Joe- the standard tortilla (i.e. the trader joe brand tortilla) is made of basically the same ingredients you would use if you made it at home, and the price is reasonable. Whole foods is like a version of that, but rather than having everything be 'whole foods' brand, it's a bunch of fancy hipster brands. Sprouts is like that but with a very large selection of fruits and vegetables of usually higher quality than you can find at your standard grocery.

Even Wal-Mart sells tortillas with a bare minimum of ingredients these days and they are dirt cheap.

I can't find them listed online. Not sure if it's due to ethnic tastes around here or what, but they are definitely there, and they are very good.

I know people hate on WM for all sorts of reasons, but if it's a packaged product they are hard to beat on price.

I would not eat any of the 'fresh' things from WM though.

Agreed.. anything boxed/frozen that WM carries, they're very good on price. Also agreed on fresh... will never do meat from WM again, and their produce section is really bottom of the barrel.

Whole Foods has a store brand (365) that's good quality for the price. You do still have to shop carefully, because their idea of quality is more about making you feel like you're saving the planet than health.

One thing that surprises me about living in SV is how downmarket Safeway is here. I thought it would be like Publix in the South (nice, but not especially nice) but mine sells nothing but corporate brands, carbs, more carbs and Bud Light. People must like baked goods.

Living in the south, I LOVE Publix. It's not much more expensive, but a much more pleasant and clean experience than basically anywhere besides Whole Foods (which has vastly fewer stores). I've never lived more than a short drive from Publix.

Googling "NASDAQ:SFM" would show those people that Sprouts also "sold its soul to Wall Street".

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