Last week we saw the conclusion of a contest for one vacant congressional House seat in Georgia. In the course of the campaign, it is estimated, some $58 million – $58 million! – was spent over many months by the candidates, their supporters and a myriad of special interest groups to sway voter opinion.
And the campaign whimpered to a predictable result: The status quo prevailed, as it would have had the vote been taken within a week of the seat’s being vacated. Probably $57 million of the $58 million could’ve been saved for good works.
Imagine what that $57 million might have bought instead of the delivery of millions of mostly unread mailers to the local landfill and undeserved obscene profit to a bunch of Georgia television stations. Oh, and the unholy enrichment of the army of political consultants who batten themselves on such battles.
The money would, for example, cover the town of Bow’s general fund for close to six years.
That same $57 million would finance nearly four more remakes of Concord’s Main Street.
It would be enough to provide new iPhones – with their invaluable access to the usefulness of the internet – as well as modest one-year service plans for some 52,000 Granite Staters of limited means.
Or with $57 million we could treat every man, woman and child in New England to a bacon, egg and cheese McGriddle sandwich – not that any nutritionist would ever recommend such a thing.
And $57 million would buy me several months’ worth of darned good food at Whole Foods!
Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration. It would buy more than just a few weeks’ worth. Plus I’d have to find the nearest Whole Foods, which I believe is somewhere south of Manchester. And I’d have to hustle, too, while there was still time.
Because while the eyes of the nation – well, at least the eyes of the American political class –were glued to the spectacle in an Atlanta suburb, the rest of us noticed that Amazon, the ravenous behemoth of American commerce, has gobbled up the palace of pricey provender, the impossibly perfect Whole Foods company and its 400-plus stores.
The prize cost Jeff Bezos $13.7 billion, and knowledgeable folks – or those who get the big bucks for sounding knowledgeable – say it’s only a short time before Amazon Prime becomes a big-time purveyor of foodstuffs. It will revolutionize the food biz, they say. Regular supermarket chains are snapping to attention, plotting counter-measures, and so on.
All I know is that when drones start depositing cardboard cartons stuffed with Niman Ranch all-natural pork chops from humanely raised pigs, freshly harvested Austrian alpine strawberries and raw milk cheese straight from the French commune of Camembert, my Whole Foods will be gone.
Well, not really my Whole Foods. Although with the price of the sale, I sort of wish in retrospect that I did have a share or two of the store’s stock. But I mean the Whole Foods I fell in love with maybe 20 years ago on a trip to see family and friends in the Washington, D.C., area. One lovely morning, my sister-in-law Alison decided to treat me to a trip to her guilty pleasure, to wit, a nearby grocery store. It was, she said, a dream place – which, I thought until we got there, sounded nutty.
Now I have to say at the outset that Alison isn’t some wimpy do-gooder leftie with a passion for Birkenstocks and whole-grain bread. She is in fact a loudly proud right-wing daughter of the Texas plains who was stuck, for a time, in the suspiciously liberal precincts of northern Virginia. So devotion to Whole Foods isn’t some holier-than-thou impulse unique to progressives.
But Alison does love food. And Whole Foods, as it was revealed to me that day in Arlington, was a temple of gorgeous – and undoubtedly delicious – food. The displays of mostly organic produce alone were dramatic – glistening and perfectly stacked mounds of oranges and grapes, artistically arranged bananas, heaps of flawless broccoli heads, sleekly stacked leeks, all crying out to be touched, to be bought and consumed. Plus a whole lot of exotic veggies that demanded to be sampled.
The meat and seafood markets were equally enticing, steaks and salmon handsomely displayed. There was a huge cheese market with white aproned and gloved attendants offering samples of wares from around the world, and the wine department’s ranks of exotic labels was compelling. The store was magical, with warm, not glaring, lighting. And no store-wide loudspeakers blaring the hour’s specials in the delicatessen.
I think there was even valet parking. I mean, it was Arlington.
I was smitten. Who wouldn’t be? After that, I sought out Whole Food markets wherever we went. Which mainly was Massachusetts. We’d carry a cooler on trips to see friends and come home with a lot of Whole Foods goodies.
Meanwhile, other grocery stores, maybe spurred on by the success of Whole Foods – and, maybe more, the growing competition from everything from expanded drug stores to big box operations opening grocery sections with competitive prices – started spiffing themselves up, elaborately and enticingly displaying their own produce. Organic food was more prominently featured. We sure saw it locally. One store even employed market umbrellas to add a little panache to the veggie bins.
And they were – what’s a nice way to put this? – cheaper than Whole Foods. A whole lot cheaper. Then Trader Joe’s showed up on the Massachusetts scene, just around the corner from our favorite Whole Foods. Funky, funny, also with terrific produce, cheese and house brands as well as great wine. But way cheaper. We started driving by Whole Foods, which not for nothing became known as Whole Paycheck.
And now we have a brand-new cadre of rivals, outfits – Blue Apron is its most well-known enterprise – that promise to deliver packaged ingredients, tailored for specific recipes they supply, to our doorsteps. Dinner in a box, only needing cooking!
So the Whole Foods I fell in love with is, in a lot of ways, gone already, or at least diminished by its energized rivals. And that meat from Niman Farm (now owned by the less-than-snooty Perdue chicken people), alpine strawberries and raw milk camembert may well be things of the past. The smart – or allegedly smart – money says that cutting the chain’s more exotic offerings is a likely Bezos move. So long, Whole Foods! It was fun while it lasted.
Today, if I were picking stocks, I’d pick an up-and-coming cardboard box company and a waste disposal outfit or two. Amazon couldn’t exist without cardboard boxes. And landfills.
Also, maybe, a whole bunch of slick political consulting firms. It’s going to be a long, rancorous few years.
(“Monitor” columnist Katy Burns lives in Bow.)