Monday, November 9, 2009

A follow-up on Whole Foods

To the post regarding Ald. Howard Brookins (21st Ward) talking to Whole Foods Market about coming to the Chatham Market shopping center to be one of the anchors in addition to Lowe's. Of course that other anchor is expected to be Wal-Mart since at this time they're the only ones who are willing to move in and build a store. But we all know that Wal-Mart is having a roadblock moment with it being bottled up in the city council's committee on finance.

Here was the question I asked Whole Foods. I'll be honest here when I say that I really danced around before I finally asked the question:
I write for a blog called The Sixth Ward emanating out of the south side of Chicago. I wrote a post about a recent community meeting to discuss a Wal-Mart store that has been bottled up on city council committee on 83rd and Stewart. At that meeting Whole Foods Market was mentioned as an anchor store at the 83rd & Stewart shopping center, but it was said the company turned down looking at that location due to the area not being educated enough. That is not enough advanced degrees and not enough data to indicate that the area would know the benefits of buying organic foods. The question is how does Whole Foods arrive at making a decision of where to place a store? Do you look at educational attainment? Are there any other factors? BTW, you should know that I have already places a store request for the area codes of 60620 and 60619. I look forward to your response and thank you in advance for your time.
In any event I would have expected days to go by or even weeks, but I have to hand it to Whole Foods they answered today!
Hello Levois,

Thank you for your email. One of the things we look for when finding new locations is a large number of college educated residents. That is, however, one small part of the overall equation. For more specific information, please visit the real estate section of our website. http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/company/realestate.php

We hope this information is helpful. If you have any further questions please use our on-line response form.

Best regards,

Jessie
You should refer to that real estate site to see what it may take for them to consider taking up shop in any community. In any case they do look at education according to them it's only a small part of what they look for in a new location for their stores.

Finally I want to refer to Worlee's comment in that Whole Foods post:
Yes I believe he has approached a number of companies and they have said no. But I believe that some would come with some aggresive grassroots marketing( i.e. neighborhood video, CBO brochures, etc).

I don't believe that Whole Foods and Costco were that unwilling to entertain a store in our community because the facts speak for themselves. Home Depot on 87th is in the top 10% based on revenue. Chatham 14 is the number 2 movie theater, Target on Cottage is a top 10% revenue store. Also, as far as Costco our neighborhood demographics are not that much different than Bedford Park and Niles.

In all fairness to Whole Foods I believe they did pass not because of demographics but because they have supporters in Hyde Park who are aggressively lobbying for them to come. Also, the large number of fast food stores (5 McDonalds in a 5 mile radius, 2 Burger Kings, 2 White castles, etc.).
OK, it took some prodding to get Target to open a store on 87th and Cottage Grove. They weren't convinced that there was any money to be made here. Of course before Target opened there was already a Home Depot, Toys R Us, and a Jewel to name a few large stores already here before Fall 2002.

As for grassroots marketing, I suppose Worlee is right. Perhaps Chatham should do what it can to at least find another grocery store to compete with that Jewel. Brookins said himself that he doesn't like that Jewel on 87th and I never entirely got the reasoning other than I suppose poor customer service or poor management. Either way the beauty of capitalism is competition there should be other players in this market. Jewel, Food 4 Less, Pete's Produce, Wal-Mart Supercenter, Chatham Food Market, or even Aldi's.

Anyway the idea of grassroots marketing is one reason I started this blog going on two years ago. Although I feel as if this blog is a long way from a marketing tool we can certainly bring attention to an area that is predominantly black and middle-class.

As for Whole Foods the main thing we can do as a community is to request another store to come to this area. And why not, they may not be another anchor at Chatham Market but we can have another chain come down and introduce our area to organic products. That's why I suggested that we find a way to get into contact with Whole Foods to let them know (and we could reach across to the 21st Ward) that we would like a Whole Foods here. It couldn't hurt!

PS - Still working on that post regarding Saturday's Wal-Mart townhall meeting.

4 comments:

  1. I agree with you on most of the points here. I mention the grassroots marketing because after CAPCC produced the conservation video several years ago Alderman Lyle commented that she got calls from other Alderman about it. Also, residents didn't know some of the facts brought out. I have looked through my junk and can't find the copy I had and I don't know if they would release a copy to you.

    I understand that some of the Alderman attend the retail trade show but I believe that some of the officers of our CBO's and residents need to go so people can see what Chatham really looks like and not what a report says we look like.

    Hopefully, we can get more community support for this blog so companies can see what our community is really like.

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  2. Can you say what was in that video? It was about conservation, but what about conservation?

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  3. Yes I can. First the video was directed by a Chatham native and professional director who worked for WTTW at the time. The video stars were the children of our community who stated that our community was made up of judges, politicians, doctors, and even people unemployed. It showed a variety of individuals, businesses as well as Cole Park. It encouraged everyone to place their trash in the garbage cans that lined our streets at that time. CAPCC at that time purchased a number of cans that were placed throughout the community. Only a couple are still around(Chatham Foods, Shell at 79th.

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  4. A lot of us would love to see a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's here in Beverly. I think the demographics would support it. The "business as usual" mentality in the 19th ward office has stifled new business development. I'm hoping that enough people will vote against the machine and elect a candidate who will work for positive change.

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