Posts Tagged “whole foods”

Last week, I whinged about Whole Foods’ bag policy, and now I’m going to pick on a product I buy there. Sorry for the sour streak, but if you’re in New England and looking out the window right now, you’re probably grumpy, too. On the other hand, I cracked a faint smile when I discovered in the course of researching this rant that WFMI CEO John Mackey’s blog has been “temporarily” muzzled since July - not only is JM no longer posting, but comments to the blog have been disabled.

And, by the way, I still haven’t bought a reusable bag. At least not one specifically for groceries. I still get paper bags, at least in part because they are useful around the house, for storing paper to be recycled and for draining fried food, for example.

Which brings me nowhere near my point.

I’ve been using Obsessively Natural Kiss My Face Moisture Shave for some time now. Usually I buy it at Whole Foods, where I discovered it in the first place. I occasionally try another kind of shaving cream/gel/soap, but I pretty much always come back to good old ONKMFMS because, despite the gripe which will follow shortly, it delivers the best shaving experience for me - easy, smooth, injury-free, pleasant-smelling.

Moisture Shave comes in a 4-oz tube for $4.39 (MSRP deduced from Drugstore.com prices, but widely discounted, even by Whole Foods) and in an 11-oz bottle with a pump top for $7.19. That’s $1.10 and $0.65 per ounce, respectively. After trying the smaller size and determining that it was good, naturally I switched up to the one that cost a lot less per shave.

Here’s the problem: the pump is terrible. It’s at an odd angle for one-handed use, it doesn’t do a good job of getting the last of the stuff out, and most annoyingly, it clogs a lot, often causing gobs to squirt out on unpredictable vectors, and potentially leading to Farrellyesque embarrassment.

So, after spending some time obsessively cleaning the nozzle (”why is there a bent paper clip hanging from your toothbrush rack?”) I gave up, tried some other brands, and evetually came crawling back to the 4-oz tube of ONKMFMS. Months, maybe years, passed, and recently, I figured I would try again, maybe they had redesigned the pump.

Same crappy nozzle, different day. One would think that this problem would have come to light somewhere along the line.

On the off chance that anybody is reading who has any pull in this matter, here are my suggestions for Obsessively Natural Kiss My Face Moisture Shave packaging:

• Redesign the pump. Check with just about anybody, since everything else I’ve ever bought in a pump (moisturizer, hand gel, dish soap…) seems to work fine.
• If that’s too much work, just make a bigger tube. For example, Alba makes shave cream in an 8-oz tube. I think I might prefer this size anyway.
• And while we’re rearranging tube sizes, how about a 3-oz tube instead of the 4-oz one? Why? Ask the TSA. (And don’t try to pass off a half-empty 4-oz tube as 2 oz of liquid, that’s terrorist math.) I bet you could charge more than 75% of the price of the 4-oz tube. Maybe more than 100% of it with a “TSA-safe” label on it.

I’ve been critical of Whole Foods management in the past, but don’t get me wrong, I’m a loyal customer, and its in that spirit that I offer some free advice on bags. Like many markets, Whole Foods is wisely encouraging shoppers to bring their own bags. The display below is hawking 99 cent bags made from 80% recycled plastic. And if you use these bags - or any others that you bring - you save 5 cents per bag at the checkout. Markets stand to save a lot of money by reducing their need for buying and stocking paper and plastic bags.

Does this plan go too far? Au contraire, this plan doesn’t go too far enough! [nod to Futurama episode 7 in season 2] Whole Foods is the sort of place where you can pay $7.99 for a single fancy lemon. I just don’t see 5 cents as changing behavior in anybody who’s not already predisposed to this sort of ecofriendliness. Does the 5 cent container deposit change a lot of behavior for the busy soccer mom?

Also, I think WF has got their carrots and sticks mixed up here. A 5 cent reward for bringing your own bag is measly, and it means that people who are oblivious to the existence of the rebate still think that bags are free. They should charge people for each bag they use, as is done in many other countries., and it should be a price high enough to make people think.

I’m not going to get into the paper vs plastic thing, let’s just call a bag a bag for now. Let’s recap my modest proposal: Sell reusable bags as they already do, and charge customers a fee for each disposable bag that the market provides. I don’t mean sell a paper/plastic bag for $x, but rather, I mean that WF should collect a fee of some sort, like the bottle deposit or the environmental fees charged by your mechanic for disposal of tires and used motor oil. This is not a profit center, this is an attempt to change consumer behavior for the good of the environment.

So, what’s the right price? I’m saying that 5 cents is not enough, and WF has set the upper bound at $0.99 by selling reusable bags for that much. I’m inclined to the higher end of the scale. Even a buck a bag might not change a lot of rich folks ways, but at least it would raise a bunch of money for carbon offsets or recycling or something. And I don’t think there’s much risk of WF losing customers since price is hardly a differentiator for Whole Foods, but eco-friendliness is. Setting the price of a disposable bag equal to that of a reusable one certainly makes the point, doesn’t it?

It’s a critical part of my thesis that WF customers are not very price sensitive, but of course that’s a sweeping generalization. Some are very very price sensitive, and some will be just plain offended by my pay per bag plan. I can foresee some difficulty at the bagging station for these customers, as the increased price of bagging could lead to some dangerous over stuffing or a reluctance to double bag when needed. I would hate to see arguments break out between beleaguered baggers and cost-conscious customers. We could moderate my harsh regime with one free bag per transaction or perhaps a “bag tax” of some percentage of the grocery bill for all the bags you want.

Speaking as someone who just bought $75 worth of groceries at Whole Foods and got it all in one paper bag, I’m ready and willing to crunch the numbers on this one.

We are prempting our regularly-scheduled feature, “This Week in Cheese” to bring you news of powerful successful seemingly intelligent people being just plain stupid with the internet. Cheese will have to wait because apparently stupid will not.

Exhibit A: NJ Governor Jon Corzine quits email because it’s annoying him. OK, you want to stop sending email to your friends and family, that’s just fine, but you’re the governor of a state - don’t you think you need to be using networked communication to get your job done? Back in April, Corzine opted out of seatbelt technology with some pretty awful results, I hope this technology decision goes better for him.

Exhibit B: Whole Foods CEO and co-founder John Mackey is in hot water for anonymous postings on finance chat boards pumping up WF stock and trash-talking about competitor Wild Oats - which Whole Foods is now seeking to buy. Not once or twice, but a thousand times over several years, and not just about the companies’ finances but about his own personal attractiveness. Sort of a reverse pump-and-dump cake with a layer of megalomaniacal ganache on top. Unethical and creepy.

Bonus stupid from Whole Foods: Remember in March when they stopped selling live lobsters because it was mean to the lobsters? Dave Lannon took the opportunity to remind us all of our own mortality - good marketing there, Dave.

Human beings are all going to die, too. But the quality of life is important while we’re alive. It is the same with animals,” said David Lannon, Whole Foods’ North Atlantic regional president.

Here’s my advice: Corzine: Buckle up and rejoin the 21st Century. Mackey: Grow a spine, resign, and seek counseling. Lannon: Sell the delicious melted butter and skip the gloom and doom.