“Straight from Detroit” reads a sign above shelves of McClure’s sweet and spicy pickles at the Whole Foods on Mack Avenue in Midtown. $5.99—a steal, considering 32 ounce jars of McClure’s can go for up to $10.65 elsewhere. Around the corner and a few aisles down, in the produce section, avocadoes are sold for $3 a pair—a buck less than what you would pay at the Whole Foods in nearby West Bloomfield. “The mission of this store is to serve all Detroiters,” Walter Robb, former CEO of Whole Foods told reporter Tracie McMillan in 2014. “We’re going after elitism. We’re going after racism”—we are, Robb effectively said, fighting to make organic products accessible to everyone.
It was with this noble goal in mind that Whole Foods opened the doors to its Midtown location in June 2013, a decision that—at the time—raised eyebrows in the local community. What business did a grocer notoriously monickered “Whole Paycheck” have in Detroit, a city where a third of residents live below the poverty level? Who would buy products significantly more expensive than those available at other stores in the city, like Aldi or local grocers? As Detroiter Toyoda Ruff put succinctly, “It’s overpriced. If it was a little cheaper, if it was the same price as other stuff, maybe. But to me, it’s overpriced.”
Yet, almost four years later, Whole Foods Detroit is booming. Since opening, the store’s profit margins have been double what was initially projected. Rumors, though unconfirmed and indeterminate, circulate that business is so good that Whole Foods is looking to open a second location in the city. And on top of all this, the store has indeed taken steps towards fostering food equality in Detroit; the Midtown location accepts more food stamps than any other Whole Foods in the Midwest, and it sells most of its items at prices lower than the chain’s usual rate.
But while these efforts to increase accessibility seem certainly to be well intentioned, questions remain as to whether or not they are really offering anything worthwhile to Detroiters in need. Prices might be lowered at Whole Foods’ Midtown location, but they still, on average, are 29% higher than that of other grocers in Detroit. Though 5-12% of purchases at this store are made using food stamps, approximately 38% of Detroiters receive aid from SNAP, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program,
indicating that only a fraction of low-income residents regularly shop there. The store’s popularity in general should not be conflated with popularity among the demographic that Walter Robb had in mind when he discussed the revolutionary potential of a Whole Foods in Detroit.
So who is it, then, flocking to John R and Mack to go grocery shopping? A boost to the store’s foot traffic comes certainly from its proximity to both Wayne State University and the Children’s Hospital of Michigan—many shoppers arrive wearing backpacks or scrubs. Young professionals from Midtown start-ups and nonprofits are also among those who frequent the store, willing and able to buy organic.
And a number of shoppers at Whole Foods Detroit seem to be those who commute in from the suburbs. The store is only four blocks from Exit 52 on I-75, making it convenient for suburbanites looking to pick up items less expensive than those sold at their local Whole Foods—that extra dollar on avocadoes is, after all, quite the saving. One University of Michigan student, who previously lived and worked in Midtown, described to me how he would go shopping at Whole Foods on weekdays—for on the weekend, the store’s parking lot would fill to the brim with vehicles flooding in from the suburbs. The grocery store had transformed into a necessary stop for suburbanites spending their afternoon in Midtown—it had become another of Detroit’s amusements, another matter to occupy the attention of those visiting the city.
For city planners, this was a goal for the Midtown Whole Foods all along. George Jackson, former president of the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, a non-profit partnered with city government, went on the record with Tracie McMillan stating, “Gentrification brings in revenue. That’s the tax base we need to pay for city services.” Like other efforts in Downtown and Midtown, Whole Foods was undertaken with the goal of accelerating economic progress in Detroit—and it was underwritten by city and federal tax incentives. $5.8 million dollars in tax breaks, and rent just a third of the average rate in Midtown, were offered to Whole Foods for building a site in Detroit.
So while Walter Robb might have been genuine in his hopes of creating a grocery store that would change patterns of food distribution in Detroit, his ambition was only one of the many that went into Whole Foods opening back in 2013. His store—though making genuine strides to be more accessible to the general public—is still being visited most by precisely the “college graduate, foodie” demographic Robb sought to escape by expanding to Detroit.
This is a good thing, urban developers might say. College graduates and foodies are exactly what we want in Detroit, they’d argue, for that is what will bring attention and money to the city. But for residents struggling to get by, it’s unlikely that Whole Foods is some sort of blessing that has changed their lives. Instead, it’s just another building, another store they don’t have access to as everyone else takes a look inside.
Walter Robb envisioned Whole Foods Detroit as an opportunity to combat the "elitism and racism" that exist around the store, and improve the health and diets of city residents
Whole Foods, in yellow, surrounded by such institutions as the Fisher Theater and the UM and MSU Detroit Centers
