Whole Foods in Hot Water

It's somewhat chic now to trash retail grocer Whole Foods. Whether it's about price or pretension, almost everyone I know has a gripe. Michael Pollan shared his beef in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, prompting this response from company execs. I've got a bone to pick with them, too, having lost to their expansionism the last good cottontail habitat inside my city limits.

But the truth is I trade there. The food is pricey and the atmosphere high falutin, but the quality is good as advertised. For several years, the quirky little outlet on Esplanade in New Orleans was a regular stop on my way home, Sunday mornings. Squeezed into existing space between giant live oaks and hundred-year old homes, the Eslpanade Whole Foods catered to a local crowd. The location had none of the brushed-steel-and-mahogany-veneer chic of the new super stores. It was clean, but plain; staffed by funky, pierced, granola munchers who smiled with good teeth and always got your change right. The coffee was excellent---probably shade grown by Costa Rican grad students---and surprisingly cheap.

Whole Foods closed that location when it opened a megastore in another neighborhood. Something had shifted. A sea change. The new outlet that sits on my bunny spot in Baton Rouge is a flagship-class giant, a bustling, upscale venue. A place to be seen.

The first time I entered the new store I thought, "Baton Rouge has people like this?" I hadn't seen that distinctive style of person since my last visit to downtown Houston: Shoppers with money, shoulder to shoulder. People who shop in heels.

You'd be challenged now to find a dredlock, or an easy-going kid behind the counter. The new workers are driven and clean cut, pushing the chanterelles and the mango smoothies at high volume. The pace of commerce is amazing. You can see five cash registers from any spot on the floor, all of them busy swiping cards.

So why do I think Whole Foods is in trouble? Because last week they stopped selling live lobsters and softshell crabs.

The move made the national news. You've probably heard about it, and if so you'll know the reason: After more than two years of study, Whole Foods concluded it is "not yet sufficiently satisfied that the process of selling live lobsters is in line with our commitment to humane treatment and quality of life for animals."

The task force helping Whole Foods determine what "humane treatment" and "quality of life" mean to lobsters includes some familiar names: Humane Society of the United States, PETA, Animal Welfare Institute, VIVA, Animal Rights International, and others. According to John Mackey, Whole Foods Co-founder and CEO, humane treatment "is an integral component of our standards for every species we sell, and lobster cannot be any different."

But what Mackey seems not to know is that pleasing the likes of HSUS will not end with kindness for crustaceans. Wayne Pacelle doesn't work that way. He starts small and with an obvious target---in this case, still-live animals awaiting a death by boiling in saltwater. Live lobsters have another trait that recommends them for action: They're considered a luxury food; lobsters are expensive to buy and messy to cook, an item easily dispensed from the American family menu.

Perhaps Whole Foods feels it has appeased the necessary demigods with this decision. It's a small price to pay---call it protection money---and a high-maintenance item that probably wasn't selling well anyway. Curiously, Whole Foods still offers "select raw and cooked frozen lobster products," which, presumably suffer the same fate they would otherwise in your kitchen, or worse: How else might one sell raw lobster meat without first chopping up a live lobster? I wonder when Pacelle, et al, will tie up that loose end?

To know Whole Foods as it was on Esplanade is to marvel that it sold meat at all. The clientele and staff could have passed for anyone's image of conscientious vegetarians. Somehow, seeing good meat carefully butchered and proudly displayed gave the place depth and substance---Whole Foods had hutzpah! Take away the meat, and all that's left is processed soy.

A note from me to John Mackey: When PETA is finally happy with your butcher shop, you'll be out of business.