“$10 for $20 to Spend at Whole Foods Market. Which should buy you... a carrot,” one sarcastic tweet read Tuesday. “Thanks, LivingSocial. Because Whole Foods wasn't totally crowded enough already,” another grumbled. Meanwhile, fans gushed of the deal, “Things that make my morning,” and “Can’t believe it!”
Whether you like Whole Foods or not, there’s no denying the store’s ability to inspire mass hysteria. Almost 700,000 deals were sold as of this post’s publication. And Living Social is still selling more than 30 deals per second, spokesman Andrew Weinstein told the Post’s blog Faster Forward.
And it’s only the latest example of fervor around the store. In the past year alone, Whole Foods has inspired rap songs,. more than 2000-word-long resignation e-mails, and full-blown culture wars.
The media has at turns called it “food porn” and at others called it “the future of democratic capitalism.”
Nick Paumgarten explained the dilemma over how to think about Whole Foods best when he wrote in the New Yorker last year: “Depending on where you are on the spectrum of epicurean cultural politics, you may consider Whole Foods to be a righteous grocer or a cynical con, a prod to self-improvement or a gateway to decadence, a neighborhood boon or a blight, a force for social good or a place to pick up chicks.”
You see the problem.
When I interviewed CEO John Mackey in 2010, he was pretty clear about how he thought why the store deserved such hysteria — because it was doing heroic things. When he realized this, he told me, ”I embraced the hero myth; that Whole Foods is trying to improve the world.”
The company planned to sell up to 1 million of the deals. They went up for sale at 5 a.m. ET and was scheduled to run until the same time Wednesday. However, by midday Tuesday about half were gone, and the deal was expected to sell out early.
The offer is available to anyone who registers for LivingSocial or is an existing member of the site.
Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods, which already is seeing higher traffic and sales trends in its stores, was not immediately available to comment. The company plans to donate 5% of the sale price to its Whole Kids Foundation, which supports children's nutrition and wellness.
LivingSocial, based in Washington, D.C. and the second-largest daily deal company behind Groupon, has run grocery offers before for regional or specialty retailers. But large supermarkets and grocery stores typically shy away from such deep discounts because they already operate on thin profit margins and offer a host of other promotions already.
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