Whole Foods started out in Austin Tx of all places, 1980's, little 'hole in the wall'. Austin also has / had a good food co-op called Wheatsfield which was bigger at the time. It's still there, but about the same size, very family type atmosphere. WF is more glistening supermarket style. When I was making goat milk soap on a large scale I contacted them. Their criteria for non-food items was strange, but not impossible (they wanted soap wrapped in plastic and placed in boxes.) I wanted mine out where people could smell it and touch it, just the opposite. They wanted 2000 bars per week which was no problem at the time, but they wanted me to cut all my other contracts, so they were the sole provider of my soap. But they would offer no real contract nor guarantees that I'd have a buyer 'forever'. Like Allan, I had to turn it down.
Later, (only 2 years ago) I attended a Biodynamic workshop in Fredricksburg (small town other side of Austin). The instructor gave a very basic intro to the preps and mostly showed off his collection of books. Then went into an elaborate discussion on dowsing and gave us some pendulums and rods to practice with (I was lousy at it!). To show it's usefulness, he said he and a friend went to Whole Foods and dowsed for energy, nutritional value in the fresh produce aisles. He said the only thing that sparked the rods was a big table full of grapes. Ironically, WF couldn't even sell them as organic. They'd been grown organically alright, but they had arrived on a truck with commercially grown grapes, and there was some confusion about which was which. This guy and his friend were 'politely' asked to leave before the other customers caught on to what they were doing. So, though I like WF and admire how far they've come in the health food industry, they DID treat it as an industry. To them, that organically grown sticker is nothing more than a commodity.
