A time to sow, a time to reap / Wild Oats, Wild Harvest

Our local Wild Oats (formerly a stand-alone Wild Harvest location) is closing for the winter to become a Whole Foods. Yesterday was an impressive scene of controlled chaos as they put everything on sale at 40% off. The parking lot was crowded, the store ran out of grocery carts for a while, and every register was in use. It was fun going on a little shopping spree, with happy customers and happy staff. The store hasn’t done that level of business even before blizzards or holidays, but the staff stepped up to the plate and kept the lines moving quickly.

What surprised me most was that the store took a simple and honest approach to clearing out their inventory. I’ve seen a lot of stores close down, and in the past decade the inventory clearance has been run by outside companies that bring in minimum wage staff, advertise huge savings, raise the prices, and then take 10% or 15% off the inflated prices. I’ve learned to avoid those closing sales. Wild Oats brought in all of their most experienced store staff to handle the registers and took 40% off the exact prices that they were charging the day before (including sale prices). That simple and honest approach is my model for how to do business. It created quite an impression to see a large business do the same. Whole Foods clearly did a lot of preparatory work with the staff, because the staff was all friendly and competent and upbeat. I believe they’ve all been offered jobs with Whole Foods, most with pay raises, but it still must be disconcerting to see their store closing down so quickly. The way they handled this closing gives me great hopes for the Whole Foods that will open up in that location in the spring with much of the same staff. And we now have enough chocolate bars to get us through the long winter without a grocery store.