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What Comes Naturally
With 400 cheeses, 500 wines, the new Whole Foods Market puts the fun in organic

By Mike Dunne -- Bee Food Editor
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Wednesday, June 11, 2003

The folks at Whole Foods Market long ago removed from the album and tossed in the recycling bin the photo of the natural-food store as small, dark and rustic, staffed by evangelistic vegetarians and stocked with pale, bruised and bug-bitten produce.

Today, with the opening of a Whole Foods Market at Arden Way and Eastern Avenue, the chain's slick and sophisticated marketing of natural and organic foods will debut in Sacramento.

To the people behind Whole Foods Market, wholesome foods can be as much about fun as nutrition. Shoppers will find perhaps the Sacramento area's most extensive selection of beer. More than 400 cheeses are to be on hand, many of them aging in a temperature-and humidity-controlled room. Some 500 wines will beckon from a cool and intimate corner cellar. Prepared foods for eating on the premises or taking out are to include six soups a day, assorted salads and a sushi bar. The showcase pizza oven isn't far from the coffee roaster."I'm excited," says Kristin Seagraves as she pushes a shopping cart in Boney's Marketplace, a natural-food store about a half-mile east of Whole Foods Market. "When we moved here it bummed me that there wasn't a Whole Foods," adds Seagraves, who previously shopped at Whole Foods markets in Texas and the Bay Area. "We bought everything there. They have so much variety. Their '365 Organic' brand is an inexpensive way to eat organically. And their deli is unbelievable."

People familiar with Whole Foods Market often say the chain's broad variety largely accounts for its appeal. That variety is apt to include several kinds of tomatoes in the produce department, specialty foods like jerk tofu and palak paneer (an Indian cheese and spinach dish) in the freezer cases, and such popular dishes as shiitake tofu salad and citrus salmon in the cafe.

Customer service is a key feature, including fishmongers who cut and clean seafood to order. And the company is big on providing consumer information and soliciting suggestions from customers, even convening a children's tasting panel to evaluate organic foods being considered for the chain's Whole Kids brand.

"They provide so much consumer information. Every item in the produce section has signage to tell you where it's grown and whether it's organic or conventional," says Jenny McTaggart, associate editor of the supermarket trade publication Progressive Grocer. "And they take a lot of consumer feedback," adds McTaggart, recalling a bulletin board she saw at a New York branch of the chain. It was festooned with questions from customers and replies from store personnel. "What a great way to learn about what you should be offering."

On Progressive Grocer's list of the country's 50 biggest supermarket chains, Whole Foods showed the most dramatic rise between 2001 and 2002, leaping from 27th to 21st. With more than 140 stores across the United States and Canada -- Sacramento is the 144th -- and with $2.7 billion in annual sales and 24,000 employees (what the company prefers to call "team members"), Whole Foods Market is the world's largest natural-and organic-foods supermarket.

On any given day, some 60 percent of the local store's produce is expected to have been organically grown, says Jolyn Warford, the company's regional marketing director. She doesn't know what proportion of the store's other items conform to federal standards for organically produced foods.

All foods and products, however, are to be "natural," defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as free of artificial ingredients, with little processing. Seafood is to come from sources supporting sustainable fishing practices; thus, Whole Foods doesn't stock Chilean sea bass, whose dwindling population has been attributed to overfishing. Cattle and poultry are to be raised without antibiotics or added growth hormones and in conformity with the company's animal-welfare guidelines; thus, Whole Foods doesn't sell veal.

While Whole Foods markets are similar from location to location, they also are tailored to reflect and accommodate local traditions and tastes. In Seattle, for example, signs over aisles are cut out in the shape of a jumping orca; in Sacramento, they are a fiercely flaming sun. Along that same line, Whole Foods officials seek out and recruit local growers and other food producers, sometimes promoting this hometown link by hanging in-store banners featuring photos of regional purveyors.

"They've been a substantial part of what we do," says Deborah Durst. "Now this is an opportunity to get our product and our name in the local marketplace. This is our first chance to go direct to (local) consumers besides the (Sacramento Natural Foods) Co-op, and that's very exciting to us."

Two relatively new local baking companies are linking up with Whole Foods for the first time -- Bella Bru Baking Co. of Sacramento and FatCat Scones of West Sacramento. Nearly 2-year-old Bella Bru, which will be selling its Nicoise olive, ciabatta and anise loaves at Whole Foods, among other breads, was asked by Whole Foods officials to submit several styles for evaluation a few months ago.

"They called right away and said they wanted to carry our breads. They liked our flavors and the different types we offer. We don't use bleached flours or sulfated fruit, so we had no problem meeting their standards," recalls Bella Bru bakery manager Bob Marcelis. He figures the Whole Foods relationship will mean a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in production for the company. His sister, Liz Mishler, who owns Bella Bru, says, "I think it's great to have our bread in Whole Foods. Having our bread at Corti Brothers has helped us place breads in restaurants because a lot of chefs shop at Corti. Being in Whole Foods will give us even more recognition."

Since it opened last fall, FatCat has been gearing up "to do for scones what Mrs. Fields did with cookies and Noah's did with bagels," says Erik Finnerty, who with Anthony Van Reese founded the firm.

Their association with Whole Foods should give them a boost toward that goal, largely because their scones will be available both frozen and baked fresh not only at the Sacramento store but at all 18 branches in the chain's Pacific Northwest region, stretching from Fresno to Vancouver. "We have the production capability to handle these larger accounts," says Finnerty, noting that the scones also are in some 40 branches of a Denver-area grocery-store chain.

The site occupied by Whole Foods has seen a succession of grocery stores over the last 15 years. Whole Foods has enlarged to 37,000 square feet the quarters previously occupied by an Albertson's, gussied up the interior in tones of "fireball orange" and "Wyeth blue," and added a soaring, eye-catching A-frame entrance resembling a ski chalet. Nonetheless, some observers note that the site isn't easily accessible from freeways and wonder whether it will attract enough shoppers to thrive.

Michael DeFazio, a neighborhood resident who owned an upscale market on the site from 1987 to 1990, isn't one of the skeptics, however. "The demographics for two miles around there are the best in the area for disposable income, and I'm sure they looked at that," says DeFazio. "Over the past 15 years that area has changed a lot. There are new employers, and a lot of the people (living around there) are not so entrenched in the old businesses. A lot of Southern California and Bay Area people who are familiar with Whole Foods are eager to see them arrive," he adds.

Jeff Metzger, publisher of the trade publication Food World in Columbia, Md., agrees that Whole Foods does "a very skilled job of picking the right demographics of where to locate stores." Whole Foods, he adds, appeals primarily to a "young, well-educated type of customer who reads nutritional labels and is well informed about food products, particularly products with a health and nutrition bent to them." Whole Foods, he adds, tends to set itself apart by "strong execution at the store level," especially with respect to customer service and its perishables departments -- seafood, deli, meat, bakery. "They have risen above a very cluttered pack in the past few years, on the strength of their perishables, customer service and variety of product. Traditional markets are growing in organics and natural-foods products, but they don't offer near the variety of a Whole Foods," says Metzger. "Many surveys," he notes, "indicate the consumer does not deem grocery shopping a pleasant experience, but Whole Foods works hard to make it pleasant."

At 9 o'clock this morning, Sacramentans can find out for themselves whether they succeed.