Whole Foods Market, the Austin-based supermarket chain, began opening doors around the country more than thirty years ago. At the time, the company saw a limited market opportunity. Today, things are quite different.

Whole Foods Market founder, John Mackey, thought a reasonable goal for his organic and natural food-focused chain was about 100 U.S. locations. Now, closing in on 400, the market opportunities continue to increase, showing little sign of slowing down.

Even among the nation’s most destitute neighborhoods, Whole Foods customers seek what the store excels at: high quality—and high-priced—food, household and personal care products. CNN reports:

When will I be able to get wheatgrass in my smoothie? Do you sell dehydrated pineapple? They want how much for this organic coconut oil? It is the kind of earnest banter you might hear at any Whole Foods Market store in Manhattan or San Francisco — only these snippets were among the full-on foodie conversations picked up in the aisles of Whole Foods’ lone store in Detroit, a gleaming 21,000-square-foot food and natural-products emporium that opened in June 2013, six weeks before the city filed for bankruptcy protection.

Detroit may be the best example of a modern U.S. city struggling to survive. And while the pricey Whole Foods Market offerings may seem antithetical to the city’s survival, the store may actually be helping to lift Detroit out of its melee with the present day economy.

How does Whole Foods Market’s costly inventory equal cities like Detroit getting healthier and more stable? Mainly because people want to, and need to, get healthier, too. The well-deserved nickname “Whole Paycheck” that Whole Foods is often known as, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It is the place people want to spend all of their money. And for good reason. Lifting a city like Detroit out of its decades of poverty can’t be done by unhealthy people. Aside from the healthy foods sold in Whole Foods, there’s an otherworldly quality being inside the stores emits, too—be it disorienting and a little bit terrifying at first. “As the great, sliding glass doors part I am immediately smacked in the face by a wall of cool, moist air that smells of strawberries and orchids. I leave behind the concrete jungle and enter a cornucopia of organic bliss; the land of hemp milk and honey. Seriously, think about Heaven and then think about Whole Foods; they’re basically the same,” writes Kelly MacLean, Stand up comic, actress and writer.

But it’s not just Detroit. The 100 locations maximum envisioned by Mackey has now been stretched to 1,200 (including UK and Canadian locations). It’s likely to stretch past that eventually, too. In the Northeast, or here in Los Angeles, the number of Whole Foods locations is particularly dense compared with the rest of the country. But more are still popping up, sure to succeed, sure to lure new customers and devotees—converts from the drab aisles and uninspired food of conventional markets.

While conventional grocery store sales are flat, or even declining, Whole Foods Market is at the core of the booming organic food industry that generated more than $35 billion in U.S. sales last year. Count “natural” foods and that number skyrockets to an estimated $150 billion, explains CNN. Whole Foods itself raked in nearly $13 billion last year (and more than 7 million customers each week). Target and Wal-Mart are now getting in on the action in a big way, too. And even though the two larger chains sell more organic products than Whole Foods by volume, it’s Whole Foods’ lead they’re following. Whole Foods “is tiny by comparison, but it’s had an outsize impact on the industry and defied the headwinds facing its brethren by dominating in the food category that’s growing — one that, not coincidentally, it helped create,” reports CNN.

A big part of its success in offering healthier food is that it doesn’t offer judgment, explains CNN, “You can buy vegan cheese at Whole Foods, but you can also buy cheesecake.” If anything, it softens the transition to living a healthier lifestyle, buffering those Brussels sprouts and brown rice with beer and chocolate. Over time, though, customers may find themselves buying more of the truly healthy foods, and less of the other stuff. It’s why those potential market limits continue to expand. Where once maybe only ten cities could support such a health-minded institution, moving towards more than 1,000 now, makes sense. Says CNN: “Whole Foods didn’t alter or dumb down its formula for Detroit, and why should it?” What would be the point of a Whole Foods Market that reflected the destitute state of a city like Detroit? If a city–or a country– is going to reinvent itself, the magic might just be most likely to sprout up surrounded by organic fruits and vegetables, organic chocolate, hemp milk and honey.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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Whole Foods has undoubtedly changed the organic and natural foods industry, but is it for the better?

For some, Whole Foods is a god-send – a convenient, well-stocked supermarket filled with a trustworthy, if somewhat overpriced, mix of natural and organic foods. For others, Whole Foods is a symbol of capitalism’s ills, a cornerstone of the “Industrialized Organic” complex that is contributing to the death of the small farmer.

Most people I know lie somewhere in the middle: they can’t deny the appeal of a one-stop-shop for their healthy yuppie lifestyles, but they’re skeptical of how conscience-friendly a company can be once it’s grown into a publicly traded corporation. In this week’s Behind the Label, we take a look at the good and the bad of Whole Foods, with a particular focus on its in-house 365 Everyday Value^® brand.

If you’re a natural foodie on a budget, you’re probably familiar with 365 Everyday Value, which encompasses a range of products from butter to body wash to balsamic vinegar. 365 products tend to be basic in nature and cheaper than their shelf-mates. But how trust-worthy are they?

The Good

Whole Foods had a humble start as a small natural foods store in Austin, Texas, started by 25-year-old college drop-out (and current CEO) John Mackey, his then-girlfriend Rene Lawson, and a staff of 19. Today, Whole Foods is a publicly-traded company with more than 310 stores in the U.S. and United Kingdom and plans for aggressive expansion in secondary markets over the next decade.

In addition to stocking a wide variety of organic, natural, and locally-sourced foods, Whole Foods also offers a number of generic products under its 365 Everyday Value^® brand, which claims to “fill your pantry without emptying your pocketbook.” All 365 products are either certified organic or enrolled in the Non-GMO Project, which verifies that genetically modified organisms are not present in the product. As mentioned in the recent Behind the Label on Kashi, verification from the Non-GMO Project can be difficult given the preponderance of genetically engineered crops in America, so Whole Foods’ commitment to this issue is worth noting.

Whole Foods has also been a heavy proponent of GMO labeling, a popular topic in the natural foods community.

Our goal at Whole Foods Market is to provide informed consumer choice with regard to genetically engineered ingredients (also known as GMOs or Genetically Modified Organisms). Clearly labeled products enable shoppers who want to avoid foods made with GMOs to do so.

In addition to its stance on GMO transparency, Whole Foods’ quality standards have been recognized as being among the top in the industry, and the company maintains a list of “unacceptable ingredients,” which it says will never appear on its shelves.

This dedication to quality doesn’t stop at food. In 2008, Whole Foods launched the Premium Body Care standard, its very own verification system for natural beauty products. The system focuses on a number of categories, including preservatives, surfactants, and fragrance, and has labeled more than 400 ingredients “unacceptable,” including parabens, polypropylene and polyethylene glycols, sodium lauryl, and laureth sulfates. And in the household cleaning aisle, there’s the Whole Foods Market Eco-Scale rating system, which marks products on a scale from orange (high standards) to green (super duper high standards).

The Bad

The 365 Everyday Value^® brand’s reputation hasn’t always been so squeaky clean. In 2008, a television report from WJLA in Washington, DC, questioned if consumers can trust Whole Foods 365 organic products if the label says that they are made in China.

What do you know about organic foods? It’s pesticide free and more expensive… but it’s worth it… right? Not necessarily. Would you believe “organically grown” in China? How organic can that be?

In a detailed rebuttal to WJLA, Whole Foods’ Organic Certification Coordinator Joe Dickson said that organic products from China can absolutely be certified organic. In the rebuttal, Dickson points out that USDA organic certification measures food integrity regardless of where in the world crops are grown.

Whole Foods Market is a pioneer in promoting and selling natural and organic foods and we have done more in our history as a company to promote and build organics than any other retailer … This is not “selling an image;” this is actually making sure that every one of our 275 stores is operating in compliance with the National Organic Standards and upholding organic integrity in everything they do.

Whole Foods’ assurances have done little to appease foods activists like the Organic Consumers Association, which picketed a Chicago Whole Foods in 2011 for selling genetically modified brands like Tofutti, Kashi, and Boca Burgers. The OCA continues to publish articles attacking Whole Foods practices, including a controversial piece insinuating that Whole Foods was “in bed with” factory farm bad boy Monsanto. That article led to rumors that Monsanto was buying out Whole Foods, which Whole Foods vehemently denied as “crazy talk.”

The Questionable

Whole Foods has taken major strides toward offering organic and GMO-free products at reasonable prices, particularly with its 365 Everyday Value^® line. But naturally, the company’s growth and success have earned it many critics, including author and food activist Michael Pollan, who associated Whole Foods with what he calls the “Industrialized Organic” in his popular book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey responded to Pollan’s claims in an open letter:

I am not sure if merely because of our size and success Whole Foods Market deserves the pejorative label “Big Organic” or “Industrial Organic,” or even to be linked to those categories. I would argue instead that organic agriculture owes much of its growth and success over the past 20 years to Whole Foods Market’s successful growth and commitment to organic. As an organization we continually challenge ourselves to be responsible and ethical tenants of the planet. Through our stores, large and small organic farmers, both local and international, can offer their products to an increasingly educated population that is more interested in organics every day.

Pollan, who professes much respect for Mackey and Whole Foods, responded:

After visiting a great many large organic farms to research my book, many of them your suppliers, it seems to me undeniable that organic agriculture has industrialized over the past few years, and that Whole Foods has played a part in that process–for good and for ill … And as I tried to make clear in my account of the organic industry, much is gained when organic gets big … But surely we can recognize all these important gains without turning a blind eye to the costs: the sacrifice of small farmers and of some of the founding principles of organic farming (its commitment to polyculture, for example; to “whole” rather than highly processed foods; to social and economic sustainability, etc.)

It all seems to trace back to the big corporation/small business dilemma: do you buy your organic kale and locally-harvested honey at the strip mall supermarket, or do you support your local farmers and neighborhood natural foods store? If price wasn’t an inhibitor, I’m sure most conscious consumers would go with the second option.

But even on Whole Foods’ shelves that conundrum exists. Buy the locally-sourced salad dressing for $13.99, or the generic 365 version for $3.99? The up-and-coming fair trade brand body lotion for $15, or the 365 cream for $5?

While I appreciate the lower-priced options, I can’t help but notice a disconnect. If Whole Foods wants to truly support local farmers and small businesses, the company should stop undercutting their offerings with its lower-priced, mass-produced, 365-branded items.

SEE ALSO:

Behind the Label: The Kashi Controversy

Behind the Label: McDonald’s See What We’re Made Of Campaign

Behind the Label: Chipotle, Food With Integrity

Check out all Behind the Label columns here.

Image: Robert Banh

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