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 \u201cmom-and-pop shop\u201d with a mission \u201cto nourish people and the planet.\u201d It was seen as revolutionary\u2013and as my neighbor John put it, provided people \u201cwith a sense of excitement.\u201d 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\u2013triggering its recent and painful downfall.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2013which 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019 frozen desserts and Amy\u2019s Kitchen frozen cooked meals. One out of these three brands remains\u2013and while they still carry Amy\u2019s Kitchen, it is almost always out of stock. These beloved brands have been replaced by Whole Foods\u2019 house-made products, which frequently are mediocre and, again, always out of stock.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is also true for the produce department, which in the past year has not stocked lettuce, pomegranates\u2013even 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\u2013but 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\u2013like misspelling ingredients like \u201cpummelo\u201d when it’s spelled \u201cpomelo\u201d and \u201cRosset potato\u201d when it\u2019s spelled like \u201cRusset potato.\u201d And though these are minor things, they overall contribute to Whole Foods\u2019 new lack of care\u2013and the everyday person\u2019s knowledge of food.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The downfall of Whole Foods raises questions about Jeff Bezos, chairman of Amazon\u2019s fascination with buying small businesses once they reach a \u201cthreatening\u201d status. This goes not only for Whole Foods but for companies like Ring Doorbell and the \u201cWashington Post,\u201d which were reportedly bought by Bezos to \u201ccomplement and amplify other regions of Amazonia.\u201d While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Bezos\u2019 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\u2013and Ring Doorbell was recently involved in a few different class action lawsuits for non-consensually submitting footage to police departments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In essence, this history suggests that Bezos is buying companies that he personally believes Amazon is challenged by\u2013only 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\u2019s fear of competition? Why can people not get the products they desire and need for their families\u2013especially those living in food deserts? In the end, the plunge of Whole Foods didn\u2019t need to happen. It certainly wasn\u2019t on its way to that in 2017\u2013but we can only hope that one day, someone can turn it into the \u201cexciting, nourishing\u201d store that it always set out to be\u2013and unfortunately, no longer is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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