Reply #23: The Parking Lots Do Tell the Tale

[NashVegas]

In Nashville, Sunshine Grocery was the main organics & natural grocer for decades. Foods (especially produce) were very reasonably priced. I could buy a baggie of fresh basil for 1/2 of the price of the plastic-boxed ones you'd see in the conventional grocers.

The parking lot was always full of old Toyotas, old Hondas, old Volvos ... the usual funk, and it was in a very mixed (economically + racially) neighborhood.

Wild Oats bought them out in the late 1990s, and then added a second store in a tonier part of town. It was a wild success, and then they expanded south of Nashville in an even higher income area and closed the original store. The parking lots of the new stores are filled with SUVs - even freaking Hummers!

And now, their herbs are in those plastic boxes, too. You get 1/2 as much for 3x the price.

And Whole Foods just bought them out.