The Whole Truth

There's been a lot of discussion lately on "sticky prices." Essentially, when the price on a good goes up, it tends to stay there. Whereas some companies (mainly large ones) kept their prices down during the recent spike in fuel costs, others had to pass those along to the end user. But now that fuel prices have lowered, it's very likely that the prices won't follow suit. I'm curious to see how that will affect long term demand for those products. Several of the items I buy went up in price and I'll be keeping a sharp eye out to see if they'll come down. Many of the fresh items I buy likely will (those prices vary quite a bit anyway), but the bread that I eat for lunch every day, the salad mix I buy... I wonder. I doubt they'll surprise me by adjusting back down.

I went on what is just typically a once per month outing to Whole Foods yesterday with all that in mind. Someone in their marketing department has been paying attention to all the chatter about the place earning its nickname "Whole Paycheck" because there were several stickers around the store that listed the WF price with a comparison price from other chain grocery stores. Considering my grocery list is usually pretty short, I have good knowledge of the individual prices of the items I buy. And the labels at WF are correct on the ones that I noted.

For example, the 5 oz. Earthbound Farms box of salad is $3.99 at Harris Teeter. A 5.5 oz. box of the comparable private label salad mix at Kroger is $4.49 (recently increased from $3.99). That's a dollar of savings (sacrificing half an ounce of greens) by shopping at Whole Foods instead of Kroger. I needed more than just 5 oz. of salad this week, though (the SO will be eating salad with me this week and for some time in the future) so I got the big 16 oz. box of private label greens at WF for just $6.98. That's a good value in comparison. The WF prices on Amy's Organic and a few other frozen foods were also comparable or less than Kroger or Harris Teeter. Same goes for the Roland roasted walnut oil that I buy. And organic grapes were actually cheaper than standard grapes at Kroger (just $2.99 per pound!).

That's not to say I didn't drop a fair chunk of change. The real reason Whole Foods gets so much of my money is that they just have a great selection of food that's impossible to find anywhere else in town. I still haven't gotten the hang of making my own very delicious tofu nuggets or the lemon roasted carrots they have on the hot bar, so I dropped a solid ten bucks on prepared food. And *mumble* on various snack foods. So for those reasons (and that it's not super convenient for me to go to Whole Foods), I will still have to limit my trips to once or twice a month. But at least there's no reason to feel really guilty about going.