In the area where I live, there are a lot of places to eat from a distance: a pizza place across the street, a 7th Street Burger, a coffee shop and two separate cookie places (including Crumbl, of course). But bridging the gap between all of these places has been a supermarket called Whole Foods, which, for the past 24 years, has sold food to the community in my neighborhood. Whole Foods started as a “mom-and-pop shop” with a mission “to nourish people and the planet.” It was seen as revolutionary–and as my neighbor John put it, provided people “with a sense of excitement.” I would also experience this excitement when my family shopped at Whole Foods. But everything changed on one fateful day in the summer of 2017, when Whole Foods was acquired by the e-commerce giant Amazon–triggering its recent and painful downfall.
One reason people go back to supermarkets is to find the products they love while gradually discovering new things that they might come to love. This, somehow, is the number one thing that Whole Foods now fails to do. For example, on early Sunday afternoons, when I go with my family to shop for the week, Whole Foods is already out of eggs, the bakery is empty yet there is a puzzling surplus of frozen chicken nuggets and butter. Before 2017, Whole Foods would also periodically have stands with samples for new produce/proteins they were selling–which has disappeared now. This disappearance is further reflected in the fact that Whole Foods rarely has the same food for more than two days in a row.
The giant reduction and constant change of the products carried in Whole Foods presents a big inconvenience and, honestly, a big turnoff for customers. For example, Whole Foods used to carry brands like Bumble Bee canned tuna, Weight Watchers’ frozen desserts and Amy’s Kitchen frozen cooked meals. One out of these three brands remains–and while they still carry Amy’s Kitchen, it is almost always out of stock. These beloved brands have been replaced by Whole Foods’ house-made products, which frequently are mediocre and, again, always out of stock.
This is also true for the produce department, which in the past year has not stocked lettuce, pomegranates–even periodically running out of lemons, limes and various root vegetables. But this is contradictory to the products they hold. It raises questions: why can you not buy a head of lettuce, yet a bag of pre-chopped salad with other vegetables is available? Why are there substitutes for foods that should be considered basic in supermarkets? Maybe these decisions make for less work at a possibly lower price–but it’s not why people have come to Whole Foods for all of these years. Noticing their mismanagement of pure products also comes with the carelessness of the little but telling details–like misspelling ingredients like “pummelo” when it’s spelled “pomelo” and “Rosset potato” when it’s spelled like “Russet potato.” And though these are minor things, they overall contribute to Whole Foods’ new lack of care–and the everyday person’s knowledge of food.
The downfall of Whole Foods raises questions about Jeff Bezos, chairman of Amazon’s fascination with buying small businesses once they reach a “threatening” status. This goes not only for Whole Foods but for companies like Ring Doorbell and the “Washington Post,” which were reportedly bought by Bezos to “complement and amplify other regions of Amazonia.” While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Bezos’ acquisitions, there have been questionable moments where an abuse of power is suggested. For example, this past year, the Washington Post was one of the only big news corporations not to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 election–and Ring Doorbell was recently involved in a few different class action lawsuits for non-consensually submitting footage to police departments.
In essence, this history suggests that Bezos is buying companies that he personally believes Amazon is challenged by–only to show little to no interest in the products/actions that they were once loved for. Why should we everyday people be subjected to one man’s fear of competition? Why can people not get the products they desire and need for their families–especially those living in food deserts? In the end, the plunge of Whole Foods didn’t need to happen. It certainly wasn’t on its way to that in 2017–but we can only hope that one day, someone can turn it into the “exciting, nourishing” store that it always set out to be–and unfortunately, no longer is.
