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Comment by manav | Hacker News Reader

I think the average Whole Foods has plenty of wasted space and that they could easily start to carry products that the average consumer has to go to a normal grocery/convenience store to buy (liquor, snacks, candy, soda, beauty etc). I don't think it will diminish from the experience. Plenty of higher end grocery stores do the same, even with a smaller footprint.

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I would guess the perceived gap is also popular processed foods that would hurt the Whole Foods brand if they carried it.

> I would guess the perceived gap is also popular processed foods that would hurt the Whole Foods brand if they carried it.

I used to think this, but Whole Foods sure has a lot more problem with the 'popular' part than with the 'processed' part. If you actually look at the nutritional content of some of their products, it's pretty dire. (Not so much for processed food, but my wife noticed the other day that one of their cake slices, for one slice of cake, had 1100 calories and 100 grams of sugar.)

Yes, that makes sense. It's less about healthy and more about not having obvious things like Cheetos on the shelves.

Whole Foods already carries all that stuff.

Whole Foods doesn't carry liquor in any place I've ever lived.

That may be due to local laws. In the places I've lived (MN and OR) no grocery stores are allowed to carry liquor.

The ~4 I've been to in SF all carry some liquor (usually a small end cap with 1-2 options of each variety). Maybe it's a regional thing?

They do, but they don’t carry the mainstream versions of things: GUS soda instead of Coke/Pepsi. Cape Cod snacks instead of Doritoes.

The thing I hate is they don’t carry regular Aspirin or Tylenol, Nyquil (your usual and basic over the counter medicines) instead they carry ‘homeopathic’ whatever useless ‘natural’ ‘medicines’ & ‘supplements’

The fact they sell and promote that garbage is far more telling of their corporate values than avoiding HFCS, IMHO.

There’s probably quite a bit of overlap between people who buy placebos and are into the organic/nonGMO marketing.

Those aisles along with clothing are really the most useless ones in the stores I've been to. Can't imagine people really buy that stuff.

Amazon has a big opportunity there as well. They've just started their vitamin Solimo brand which is actually decent, and private-labelling generic drugs is just easy money for most retailers.

Only a handful have hard liquor in California and with limited selection. None carry any big multinational brands and products like Coca Cola, Procter&Gamble, Colgate/Palmolive, etc.

In my experience, comparing organic food at whole foods vs elsewhere whole foods is similar price and sometimes the better deal. However, the conventional stuff they have (that makes up a large portion of the food they sell) seems to always be more expensive than elsewhere. I'm guessing the idea of avoiding the same exact brands is to make it a bit harder for customers to notice how much more expensive that stuff is at whole foods or at least think maybe the quality might be a bit better.

Last time I went to WF I went just for cold medicine (OTC robitussin, etc) they didn't have anything but more "natural" options. It was probably a year ago. Color me dumb, I usually shop at HEB but the WF was on the way. That really surprised me. Pretty sure I left empty handed.

HEB is far superior to anything we have in California.

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