Saturday, August 2, 2008

Whole Foods article

The New York Times has an interesting article today about Whole Foods trying to be more budget-friendly. It includes a little comparison price chart that makes interesting reading.

It's timely, because it repeats what I've been noticing - that on some things, Whole Foods is actually quite good on prices. And saves me the planned trip to Whole Foods today to do some price comparisons. But you have to be really careful - in fact, I have a notebook that I take grocery shopping with me sometimes, in which I jot down the prices of my staple items at each of the stores I go to. Otherwise, I'd never remember which store charged which amount. It was due to my notebook that I discovered that Whole Foods actually had the best price on Ezekiel bread. And these days I always get my organic oatmeal from the Whole Foods bulk bins - at $0.99 per pound, it's a much better deal than anything you can get prepackaged at other stores. However, some things can be much more expensive at WF than at other stores, so unless you do as I now do and spread your shopping over different stores, what you might save at WF on some items will be more than taken up with what you are paying in excess on other items.

1 comment:

Teal Marie Chimblo Fyrberg said...

Great blog and post! I also love WF, but am careful which items I buy from them. Generally, I get my produce at the farmer's market because WF is way too high (plus farmer's markets are awesome!) However, their 365 store brand is very competitive on many items, and if you subscribe to their e-newsletter, they have specials on a lot of products each week.