"wild oats" news and stories

Awesome: the idea behind bulk food. Cheaper, more control over the quantity, easy.

Not-so-awesome: the collection and storing of bulk food. Most supermarkets provide plastic bags, which are not only bad for the environment, but are messy to store, can break or leak easily, and typically result in a pile of unusable crumbs.

But a friend of mine has come up with an easy solution that I'm jealous I didn't think of first: she bought a few of these Droppar storage jars (at left) from IKEA (although any small metal or glass jar with a lid would do), and brought them to her local Whole Foods store. The cashier first weighed the jar itself, which she wrote on a piece of tape and placed on the jar lid.

Each time my friend buys in bulk, she simply brings her jar with her, writes the checkout code on a sticker which she keeps on the jar, and brings it to the cashier, who subtracts the weight of the jar and charges her for just the food. Easy, environmentally-friendly, and easy to store when she gets home. (Another idea? Just wash out peanut butter or pasta sauce jars, place stickers on the sides, and reuse those).

Warning: this should work at Whole Foods and Wild Oats, or other similarly-minded food stores, but I don't know if other stores would agree - you'd have to call your local supermarket out find out.

Why would a company CEO go on a financial web site and post about his company under a pseudonym?

That's what the Federal Trade Commission is investigating. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has admitted that it was he who posted under the name "Rahodeb" (an anagram of his wife's name) on Yahoo's financial boards. In fact, he didn't just post about finances and stocks in general, he specifically posted about rumors that Whole Foods might buy Wild Oats. This was in January of 2005. Whole Foods bought Wild Oats a few months ago for $565 million.

Or should I say, "might buy them." The FTC is trying to block the agreement and is using this new info for their case. Mackey insists he did nothing wrong since all of the stuff he talked about was public knowledge and harmless.

[via Boing Boing]

Whole Foods had been expanding breath-takingly fast over the past several years, with new locations - many of which are huge or feature unusual amenities - popping up all over the place. Being everywhere is one way to beat out the competition (think Starbucks), but another way is to buy them up. Whole Foods has just announced that they will be buying Wild Oats Markets, one of their top competitors, for $565 million, with the deal expected to to close over the next few weeks.

Colorado-based Wild Oats has 110 stores in 24 states and British Columbia and has not been doing as well as its rival. Whole Foods has twice the sales per square foot of retail space, though Wild Oats has smaller stores, and recently lost both their chief executive and chief financial officers.

Some stores will be closed and others will be relocated to fit in with existing Whole Foods stores, but Whole Foods feels that they can improve the Wild Oats stores on the whole and "put jet propulsion under [them]" to bring their sales up to Whole Foods levels. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey estimates that it could take two ears to fully integrate the Wild Oats stores

Source

I was in my local Whole Foods Market yesterday looking at the selection of hot and cold deli items for purchase, and it got me to thinking, "Is this food ever good?" Haven't we all been there? We are in the market wanting something quick and easy for lunch or dinner so we get sucked into buying the prepared food. More often than not, don't we get burned? (...unless we're buying a sandwich, that is.)

I think it's safe to say that the deli salads in most chain supermarkets are disgusting. The macaroni and potato salads (and things like ravioli and spaghetti) generally aren't made on-site. They are made by companies like Reser's and are shipped in bulk to market delis. They're often sickly sweet, packed with preservatives, and just plain not good.

But even at specialty markets like Whole Foods, Wild Oats, and New Seasons, I find that deli food items to be sub par. (Especially at Wild Oats.) Grilled salmon and chicken breasts always look dried out, cold salads look soggy, curled squares of lasagne always look like they've been sitting awhile, and everything has that refrigerator-y taste from being in the cold case all day uncovered.

Have you experienced a market that gets it right? Where prepared food is fresh and tasty? If so, please share.

By the way, the lemon quinoa that I chose at Whole Foods? It was good.