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April 13, 2005
The food, the Whole Foods, and nothing but the food
Gothamist has reviewed the new Whole Foods in Union Square. I've been a Whole Foods fan since I lived a few hundred feet above a Whole Foods in Chicago. Now I have to trapsie 66 blocks down to the building that houses Time Warner's headquarters, where Whole Foods has one of its largest stores worldwide. Still, it's worth it, as Forbes describes the store:
At New York's posh Time Warner Center the new Whole Foods is a 59,000-square-foot temple to culinary obsession. The prepped-foods section is laid out like a pungent open-air bazaar. Along the walls are: a full sushi bar; an open brick oven where chefs make fresh pizza at $7 a pound; a "comfort food station" that serves beef stew and tuna noodle casserole; a pasta area offering mushroom goat cheese lasagna and eggplant rollatini; and a deli that sells 850 sandwiches a day. Every week the Indian foods hot bar sells two tons of vegetable korma, aloo mattar and the like at $7 a pound.It's great business. Retail rents in the Time Warner Center reportedly go as high as $450 per square foot, or $27 million a year if applied to Whole Foods' space. ... The company won't disclose the specific rent, or the store's total sales, but says sales more than cover expenses, even without jacking up prices beyond those charged outside of the city.
I got some gentle ribbing for contrasting the Chicago Gold Coast Whole Foods with the Midtown New York Whole Foods. So what I can say is this: Whole Foods is a great place to find an exaggerated stereotype of the people who live in a particular area. Chicago's Gold Coast skewed towards old rich people, plus midwestern naturalists and the moneyed hippies who came for the organic stuff that is at Whole Foods' roots. Occasionally the hot young 20-something could be found, but people-watching was not a reason to go regularly.
The Midtown New York Whole Foods is very Midtown New York: a mix of young businessmen, harried UES mothers, and model-gorgeous/rail-thin UWS girls trying to stay that way. The food is nice--Whole Foods allows me to make substantial cuts in my intake of sodium, fats, preservatives, and pesticides--but the most interesting aspect of Whole Foods is the people-watching. Whole Foods is one of the few places I go during the day in NYC where women outnumber men. While a woman typically checks out a man starting with his clothes and then makes eye contact, the check-out at Whole Foods starts with one's basket. I find myself doing it, too. I get a lot more looks when I put some fresh broccoli in there, but TV dinners (even organic ones) are a turn-off, so they have to be hidden. Verily, it is quite impressive that a woman's first screen would be a man's food choice. Maybe they should start listing food choices on those dating websites? Like this: "find me someone who likes organic califlower and arugula but not cabbage."
Speaking of check-outs, how about the checkout counter? The line is typically 15 minutes or longer, even with every register open... and this is a bit too New York for me.
Posted by adrianjo at April 13, 2005 10:00 PM
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