From: jym@mica.berkeley.edu (Jym Dyer)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,talk.environment,ca.environment,ucb.general
Subject: Whole Foods and Coors -- The Thrilling Second Episode
Followup-To: alt.activism.d,talk.environment
Date: 22 Jul 92 10:44:01
Organization: The Naughty Peahen Party Line
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu

[While the events mentioned here refer to a store in Berkeley,
that store is part of a nationwide chain -- thus the nationwide
distribution.  My correspondents have indicated that Whole Foods
pulls similar stunts throughout the land.]

=o= In our last thrilling episode, I was complaining that Whole
Foods, a "natural foods" supermarket in Berkeley, was selling
Killian's Irish Red, a Coors product that doesn't look like a
Coors product.  They do not sell other Coors products.

=o= Whole Foods of course has the right to sell anything they
want to.  But their target market includes many people who are
concerned with the environment, and they position themselves as
an organization committed to environmental causes.  So when they
pull an anti-environmental stunt, I'm going to call them on it.

=o= The Coors Co. and its products has been boycotted for many
years by quite a variety of groups for quite a variety of
reasons.  In the forefront of these reasons are the terrible
things they've done to the environment.  In addition to being
one of the worst polluters in Colorado, they've bankrolled
plenty of anti-environmental policymaking, and are ultimately
responsible for the political ascendancy of James Watt and
Anna Gorsuch.

=o= Coors' antics are well-known by many in Berkeley and
Oakland, and this is surely why Whole Foods doesn't carry
Coors at all.  Imagine my surprise a few months ago when
I saw a huge display of Killian's Irish Red "on special"
there.

=o= Killian's doesn't go out of its way to look like Coors.
If customers read the fine print, they'll find that it's brewed
by Coors, but they'll have to look hard.  Whole Foods, of
course, knew who they bought it from.

=o= I undertook a campaign to call them on this.  I wrote them
letters and I posted a message to these newsgroups suggesting
that folks do the same.  And you know what?  You came through!
Whole Foods is now a Coors-free zone.

=o= Not without some grousing, of course.  Whole Foods made
a number of incorrect statements on their "community bulletin
board," and I address those here:

  o "We carried Killian's because our customers liked them
    before they were acquired by Coors." -- These customers
    must be at some other store, because Killian's has been
    owned by Coors long before Whole Foods opened its doors
    in Berkeley.

  o "We do not support secondary boycotts." -- Whole Foods
    is trying to depict Killian's as a seperate organization.
    This is incorrect:  Killian's is owned outright by Coors
    and all their profits go to Coors.  And they are misusing
    the phrase "secondary boycott:"  this would refer to (for
    example) boycotting Whole Foods for carrying Coors products;
    not to boycotting a Coors product that isn't named "Coors."

=o= I've received a number of letters from folks wondering why
I patronize Whole Foods at all.  The short answer is that they
are doing *some* good:  They provide certain environmentally-
friendly goods that I can't get elsewhere in the East Bay.  So
I am working on pointing out (and, in this case, eliminating)
its most hypocritical elements.

=o= In general, though, I prefer small local shops and farmers'
markets.  I just go to Whole Foods to take up the slack.

=o= Incidentally, if anyone's interested, there's another
environmental matter afoot at Whole Foods:  The use of plastics
in packaging.  When Whole Foods opened, they were pushing their
plastic "envirocycle sacks" with a vengeance, citing (plastics
industry) studies showing that they were environmentally
friendly.  They also provided a bin for recycling HDPE plastic
containers.

=o= Berkeleyites never quite went for the plastic bags, I'm
happy to say.  The HDPE bins disappeared, and after *much*
prodding and prying from customers, it came out that the people
taking the HDPE weren't recycling it at all.  (Note mention of
a similar scam in a recent Greenpeace press release posted to
misc.activism.progressive/alt.activism/talk.environment by me
a week or so ago.)

=o= Whole Foods has recently changed their story:  They're now
claiming that there's just not enough space for the HDPE bins.
Let's call them on it!
    <_Jym_>
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