DS asked:
To elaborate: Shops like Fresh and Wild (in the UK), Whole Foods Market (just opened in UK) and independent organic food retailers sell really nice food at obscenely high prices.
To elaborate: Shops like Fresh and Wild (in the UK), Whole Foods Market (just opened in UK) and independent organic food retailers sell really nice food at obscenely high prices.
Would they be justified in saying that good food just costs that much?
Or are they deliberately going for the ethical dollar, knowing it’s a big dollar, and that affluent consumers are willing to provide them with extra high profit levels in order to pay for tasty, healthy and allegedly ethical food?
Gary H: Selling a new item increases *overall* profits because you have a new thing to sell.
What I want to know is if that margins on organic food are particularly big, and if retailers *choose* to market them as a ‘premium’ product (with the intention of making more profit, like you said), or if they just *are*, by their nature, very expensive.
The driving force behind any new product, or old product presented in a new way, is the incentive for increased profits.
I mean, look what they did with water. Who would have ever imagined water would cost as much as gasoline or beer!
It’s probably a little of both but there are extra costs associated with organically growing food items. For example, if insects eat 3% of your crop without using chemical pesticides, it is clear that your net crop will be less by NOT using the chemical toxins.And there are organic compounds that work like their more toxic chemical cousins yet are more expensive to buy and apply. Another example is the soaps of long chain fatty acids are decent insecticides yet are a bit harder to apply to the fields and wash off easily in rain. But… as you say I also agree that markets are more than willing to squeeze any extra cash out of the consumer and as organic demand grows we see the cost disparity. Keep up the faith…. natural is better naturally!
organic foods are better for you so genereally something that is good for you, is more likely to be higher because it helps do a certain function in your body that other foods dont do.. personally thats what i think
First, Did you know Fresh & Wild and Whole Foods are the same company?
In my experience selling organic/natural foods, I do not think the natural foods stores have a higher mark up than traditional grocery stores. Organics cost more to produce (I know this sounds counterintuitive but it is somehow true). Also, in regular grocery, the manufacturers and farmers are really beaten up over price in a way that has not yet become wide-spread in organics. If farmers were paid a living wage for their crops, our cost of regular food would be very high as well.
We’ll see how this all turns out as more and more giant companies get on the organic bandwagon.
I don’t know how it works in the UK, but it seems differently than here in the US. I don’t find it any more expensive to eat organically here. There are many reasonable organic foods available at local farm markets, food co-ops, health food stores, farm co-ops. I do not see windfall profit taking at the places I shop.
The people looking for profits are the Wal-marts and other Big Box stores that are jumping on the organic bandwagon.
I do not spend my money with them.
I would suppose you will just have to learn where to shop and begin networking with like-minded people in your area. A great free resource is the Weston Price Foundation. As far as I know they are world wide and can often provide you with a LOCAL list of organic and whole food providers who will not try to gouge you on price.