Whole Foods a Status Symbol

Where you shop says a lot about who you are, and what you are willing to pay for. I am both thrilled that one day I’ll be able to browse the luscious aisles of , and intrigued to see how it will fare in our diverse community that seems to love a good bargain.

Having a Whole Foods in your neighborhood is really a status symbol, above all else, which can be a good thing. Maybe more high-end stores will be attracted to the area, and it will become a destination hot spot for consumers.

When I drive through a town that happens to have a Whole Foods, I inadvertently think: “Now this is a nice city. I could live here. It seems so safe and clean.”

The reality is that I could never afford to shop there solely, but I marvel at people who can and do. I wonder, though, that even if I could afford it, would I really want to spend that much for groceries when I could get them much cheaper somewhere else?

You can’t really get the quality of food elsewhere, though. Whole Foods has the best artisanal salts, the butcher will grind my pork fresh for me, and the truffles are made from pure organic cocoa.

That’s why I equate going to Whole Foods to a fine dining experience, a foodie extravaganza. A few times my boys and I have hit the Whole Foods in Sonoma after a day of riding trains at Traintown, and we liken it to going out to dinner at a colorful restaurant where the nice workers let you sample all the food. 

I predict that once the much-anticipated store graces the corner of Paseo Padre Parkway and Mowry Avenue, it will become part of my weekend shopping repertoire. I’m sure there will be a few things that I won’t be able to find anywhere else, or that I’ll fall in love with.

If anything, it sure beats the shopping experience I have where I shiver through warehouse aisles and bag my own groceries to get the cheapest produce. Will my fellow shoppers who shuck corn alongside me at the local Food Maxx venture out to Whole Foods, or will grocery shopping suddenly be the new class marker? 

I know that mass farming and production are cheap, probably too cheap, and that organic food is so expensive because it requires more care, specialized equipment and produces less yield. Somehow, stores like Wal-Mart and Target have still found a way to carry some organic goods at a good price, even though I’m sure they are not locally produced.

So far, I’ve been able to feed my family of five healthy food from the cheaper stores in the area, and from the little plot of dirt in my backyard that yields a few strawberries and herbs. So what if our meats come shrink-wrapped in yellow Styrofoam trays? That leaves us more money to head out to Whole Foods for some dessert!