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| The real reason Whole Foods is so expensive. |
If you walk into a Whole Foods store, you’ll probably notice that their prices are quite a bit higher than your average grocery store. What with sourcing all of that fancy organic food, of course Whole Foods has to charge higher prices!
But if you’ve visited a Whole Foods store in California recently, you may have noticed that your grocery bill was more than a little high, it may have even been against the law.
It turns out the store was selling items that were labeled heavier than they actually were and the cost of the container was not taken out of the sale price. In other words, Whole Foods was charging customers as if they were getting a pound of food when they were really only getting half a pound. That just happens to violate lots of Consumer Protection Laws in California, including some criminal laws.
Whole Foods is actually going to pay a hefty price for the violations:
Whole Foods must pay $210,000 to each of the city attorneys of Santa Monica, Los Angeles and San Diego, who brought the case against the retailer. Whole Foods must also reimburse county and state agencies that conducted the pricing investigation and pay $100,000 to a weights and measurements enforcement fund.
As part of an agreement covering five years, the grocer must appoint state- and store-level pricing accuracy managers, and each of the 74 Whole Foods stores in California will face random quarterly audits.
(Source: Fox News)
According to Whole Foods, they cooperated with authorities and food prices were accurate 98% of the time. Apparently, that is supposed to make you feel better.
Now, I don’t necessarily think that being organic or anti-GMO makes someone engage in illegal activities, but I appreciate the irony here. Whole Foods is demanding all products containing GMOs should have labels, yet the store cannot get its own labels correct. The store that claims its consumers have a “right to know” how their food is raised cannot be bothered to accurately label its own products so consumers know exactly what they’re getting.
And this isn’t the first time the store’s general operations have turned out to be such a problem. Remember back when Whole Foods was selling meat that had maggots in it?
For a grocery store that brands itself as elite and supposedly better than other stores, Whole Foods is totally missing the mark. But I’m not surprised. Instead of focusing on supporting pseudo-science, they should be thinking about supplying their stores with food that is actually health, abundant, efficient, and really environmentally friendly.
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
Here on the east coast, they got caught in a meat recall from their processing plant in Cargill, PA for tainted ground beef and then people learned that not all their meat is local and raised in a humane way. It was great for our beef business!
Check into their prepared/hot foods bar… I have food allergies and their ingredient tags are often visibly incorrect. You will see oil in the dish, yet no oil is listed on the tag, etc.. Of course, they swear they only use non-GMO Canola oil. Worse yet, they literally don't give a damn when you point these things out…