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Sectarian food snobbery
By Andrew Flohr-Spence
spencand@mscd.edu

It seems like everyone has a passionate opinion about the takeover. The topic has fractured communities, broken up marriages, pitted brother against brother.

While reports of violent clashes between supporters of the two sides remain unconfirmed and perhaps mere exaggeration, the news of Whole Foods’ planned buyout of Wild Oats has clearly rocked the food community.

My friend the food snob was almost hysterical on the phone.

“Those corporate snobby Whole Foods bastards are taking over Wild Oats,” he said, spitting the words with disgust. He sounded angry and dejected, and I asked him if he wasn’t perhaps overreacting a bit.

“You’re not one of those Whole Foods lovers, are you?” he asked with an anger in his voice that scared me.

“Hell no, but I have no love in particular for Wild Oats either,” I said. “They’re both publicly traded corporations and both overpriced just like every other big business, and besides, Wild Oats’ bread sucks!”

The foody wouldn’t have it.

“They are going to yuppify the store on 11th Avenue. Either that or just close it down,” he screamed back. He began ranting uncontrollably about how horrible and corporate everything was becoming, and at some point I just laid down the receiver. He was trying to hold on to something long gone.

Growing up in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, as long as I could remember, there had been some sort of store on 11th Avenue between Ogden and Emerson streets. In grade school we would stop to get candy on our way home at FBC Foods International, which was independently owned and operated by Jane and Emery Dorsey.

In 1992, the year I graduated high school, they sold the store to Alfalfa’s Market, a Colorado-owned chain of New Age health food stores. Then in 1996, Wild Oats, a Colorado corporation that had grown to be the nation’s third-largest natural-food chains, bought Alfalfa’s.

Again the store changed its name, but the market was still in the same location.

Far from being any less corporate than Whole Foods, Wild Oats is also beholden to investors and profit margins. The ownership simply followed the strange trends of our economy.
Wild Oats, in particular, just never impressed me. In a world of radically strong views about groceries, I am not a fickle food freak. I do not claim to have any special knowledge of culinary what-have-yous.

I prefer food made from scratch with fresh ingredients, but in reality I will eat almost anything. Due to a damaging experience working at a poor excuse for a bakery, where I witnessed the tortuous and cold process of factory bread making, the only thing I really care about is fresh baked bread. Preferably unsliced.

The only other constraint is that I have no car. I go to the nearest place, and that happens to be Wild Oats. They do have unsliced bread, but fresh bread is not something Wild Oats considers important. Poor me. My consumer rights feel violated.

My only worry about the big bad takeover is the chance that the new owners might close the store and there would someday no longer be a market in my neighborhood.

If people have a problem with the ownership they should get off their butts and buy from the few independent farmers still around who would be more than happy to sell them fresh and organically-grown produce. But that would mean giving up our sacred convenience.

As for me, I just hope the 11th Avenue store’s next owner has fresh bread.