Grocery Update #34: Winning Thanksgiving.

Also: Apples. So many awesome apples.

Discontents: 1. Winning Thanksgiving. 2. Seen In The Wild. 3. A Union Made Thanksgiving. 4. Tunes.

1. Winning Thanksgiving.

Walmart.

Walmart, the real everything store, has an old-school grandma’s house vibe as you walk in. Pallet displays of Brach’s peppermint candy canes, santa/reindeer graphic popcorn tins and family size red buckets of Folgers coffee, plenty of stimulants to help you survive family gatherings and your grandpa’s QAnon theories. It must be working, considering the Walton family establishment achieved comparative sales of over 5% in Q3, really unheard of at the scale that Walmart operates, $300 billion in grocery sales annually and growing and growing. Walmart owns the food supply and they want to own your holiday wallet share too. Holiday basics are everywhere. The lighting is bright, antiseptic and industrial, but the prices and assortment are homely and familiar. “Texans come here for low prices” in banners over every pallet drop. Yeah no shit, we don’t come here for the ambience.

Stove Top stuffing, $1.98, Cool Whip tubs $1.98, Blue Bell ice cream tubs $8.32, Gold Medal 5lb. flour, $3.98, Smithfield smoked hams $2.06/lb, Honeysuckle White frozen young turkeys, market leading at .88/lb, Marketside cured hams, $2.48/lb, and Butterball Premium turkeys, $1.04/lb. The turkeys are in frozen bunkers all around the store, reminding you that Walmart owns Thanksgiving for millions of Americans, 30% grocery market share and growing. Green beans, Great Value, .50 cans and French’s fried onions, $3.72. LouAna peanut oil, 3 gallons for deep frying your Turkey, just $46.97. Styrofoam eggs are $3.68 and $4.46 a dozen, cage free $5.78, and gallon milk at $3.47. And still plenty of Red Baron, Hungry Man and frozen entrees for the holiday averse. Walmart is “only” 25% market share in Austin, slightly underweight relative to the dozens of regions where they are 30, 40, 50, 60% share, but they are still swinging hard.

HEB.

The lighting is softer at HEB, the mood lighter, the signs cheerier with pastels, tinsel and cursive fonts. The store smells like food, not cleaning spray, mildew or rotting produce. It smells warmly baked, maybe tortillas or baguettes, with a freshness uncommon at retail. “Here Texas Holidays Are Better”, hometown heros, blue, green and red letters framed with white background and violet crowns, just like Austin expects. HEB is 50% market share in Texas’ formerly “weird”, now heavily gentrified capital city. And no wonder. HEB is practically a religion, the devotion by shoppers akin to pilgrimage, loyalty validated through low prices, fantastic selection, stellar service and a warm, family focused, hometown vibe. The red on yellow sale signs, at least 2 feet high, are stacked all along the tops of the dairy cases, over each endcap, hanging from the ceiling, monopolizing your attention and line of sight with 2/$4, 2/$5, 2/$6, $1, $1.98. Clean, best in market price points, simple, direct statements, no bullshit, no small talk, no vagaries, no Prime discounts.

Milk, $3.30 and $3.60 gallons, or $6.98 organic. A broad selection of turkeys, not surrendering the value line but offering some higher attribute birds for more affluent shoppers. Mary’s Organic $3.47/lb., HEB Natural, $2.29/lb., HEB Fresh Young turkeys, $1.98/lb, Butterball $1.04/lb, and Riverside at .88/lb, neck and neck with the Walton gang because HEB does not mess around. They are one of the few retailers that tames Walmart, like here in Austin, where they still manage to open stores along every exit on state highways north, south, east and west of downtown. Is there such thing as a benevolent monopoly? That could be a first, but it could be HEB.

The violet crown holiday signage alights over a dozen endcaps, with Pepperidge Farm stuffing at $2.68, gluten free stuffing at $5.98, 48 oz of organic chicken broth at $3.18, Karo syrup at $2.97, French’s crispy fried onions at $3.72, matching Walmart to the penny, Blue Bell tubs at $8.32, likewise, organic powdered sugar at $3.48 and organic canned pumpkin at $2.50, and 5 lb of organic flour for just $6.38. A dozen Styrofoam eggs at $2.97, best in market, and an 18 count of cage free eggs for $6.57, a dozen likewise for $4.48. And all the other vibes that Texans adore about HEB, stacks of fresh tortillas, low priced but decent handmade sushi, locally made chips, piles of private label pantry loaders, a sign explaining all about olive oils, big runs of charro and borracho beans, plenty of organic and local produce, an epic selection of prepared meals and rotisserie chickens, a huge specialty cheese section and gorgeous fruit, cheese and charcuterie party platters for $25. “Here Everything Is Better”, that’s what they say, and for the price, selection and quality, they do not lie. The benevolent monopoly coasts to market dominance once again.

Target.

Target, reeling from a flat comparative sales growth in Q3, now gearing up for the Holiday crush. Maybe all those price cuts were too much, too soon, customers not churning up enough unit volume and demand elasticity to make up for the 5,000+ markdowns. That is a lot of markdown. My old supervisor at Whole Foods, a gentle, soft spoken grocery lifer who let me get away with way too much shit, always used to warn us, “Watch the markdown.” Target should have listened to my guy Jim. Better luck next quarter, Targeteers.

The first thing you see when you walk in is the glowering security guard, a sentinel standing in the line of light of the $12 gingerbread houses that frame the entryway. Target surprisingly, also carries turkeys. At .99/lb. for Butterball, they are right smack between HEB and Walmart for mass market birds. Not messing around. Likewise, gallon milks at $3.49. Rationalized and optimized, that is how Target rolls in grocery. Bruce’s canned yams at 2/$3 and Jet Puffed marshmallows, also 2/$3, with Ocean Spray canned cranberry sauce, $1.99.

“Expect More. Pay Less.” My expectations are low to be frank. Who shops for Thanksgiving at Target? Surprise me, thy Bullseye. And they do. French’s fried onions, best in market, $3.49, in case your sad, bland, green bean mushroom soup white people casserole gets lonely. Whatever makes people happy.

Swanson chicken broth, $1.99. A couple other displays of canned condensed milk, random Thanksgiving accoutrements and ingredients, nothing special or interesting, but logical and category managed down to the nub. This is Target after all, rationalized, boiled down, Targeted, to most common denominators, optimized to the most basic customer need states. Brutalist and simple, plenty of private label and the name brand comfort foods you expect. Not much else, and that is why it usually works.

A big endcap of LouAna peanut oil, with no pricing. I guess it must be free. I didn’t steal it though. I don’t deep fry turkeys. A big run of Favorite Day confections at the registers, Targets new private label “celebration” and “occasions” snack food line, in pastel tones, cute labels, kitchy names, clever assortment. Holiday cookies, mini gingerbread houses, peppermint drink bombs, hot cocoa toppers, candies, cookies, all in green, red, snowflake pattern, bland pastels with lower case serif fonts, like they are trying so gosh darn hard to be “yassified”, as the kids say these days. This is not your grandma’s holiday candy selection. Target, aiming square at Millennial, Zoomer customers, making up for breadth of assortment with, ahem, Targeted seasonal offerings. As if admitting to themselves and their customers, Target is not your premier holiday destination, Target does not cover all your bases, but Target does not give up the ground on pricing on your most basic items, and we have some fun stuff too. Convenience, rationalized. Is Target a serious holiday destination? That is debatable. But they are not ready to cede much ground.

Wheatsville Food Co-op.

There is a food cooperative in Target’s parking lot. Around the corner, actually, but still close enough to walk to. Wheatsville Food Co-op is Texas’ lone, venerable consumer and community owned grocer. And probably the only grocer in Texas to donate a portion of sales to support Native American foodways, the closest any business has ever come to acknowledging American civilization’s debt to the original inhabitants of this continent. It is profound to see this at retail, usually a very risk averse, apolitical and even reactionary environment for such topics.

The signage statements are powerful, a 5 cent donation per Field Day item sold, leveraging UNFI’s core private label value tier for a positive, food sovereign-oriented goal. Cognitively dissonant but somehow common sensical. The signage is everywhere when you walk in, on an endcap of Field Day holiday basics, priced to compete with HEB and Sprouts and Whole Foods, organic canned pumpkin at $2.29. organic sugars, $2.99. Another Field Day endcap with some legacy Woodstock UNFI private label organic canned cranberries $3.49, Field Day organic turkey gravy 2/$5, organic canned corn 2/$3, organic stuffing, at 2/$6, Wild Harvest organic broths, $2.99 for 32 oz., organic sugars for $2.99, organic 5 lb. flour for $5.99. UNFI’s value tier assortment, from everyone’s favorite Rhode Island natural/organic wholesale distribution mobstahs, to be said in that weird Rhode Island accent that fits halfway between Boston and Bed-Stuy, with 5 cents a package benefitting Native Foodways.

The genius, the heart, the sheer moxie of the National Cooperative Grocers organization to leverage their best in market cost plus relationship with UNFI towards the greater good, while offering greater prices and higher quality items. Unique, in the fullest sense of the word. Exemplary. And essential.

A smattering of NCG’s Co+op Deals endcaps, with olive oils, Advent calendars, peppermint cocoa Pretzel Crisps, Tony’s Chocolonely Christmas Boxes, Alter Eco truffles, Chocolove confections, Dandies vegan marshmallows, Lily’s and Enjoy Life allergen and diabetic friendly chocolate chips, a run of Siete Foods grain free Bunuelos for $4.99 and Yumearth candy canes for $7.99. Holidays are here, y’all.

And turkeys too. Wheatsville is not playing the value tier race to the bottom. No loss leaders. They have the most turkey price and attribute tiers in the Austin marketplace, with 7 different options. Mary’s free range, non-GMO fed for $3.99/lb., organic for $5.49/lb., heritage for $6.99, hyper-local, pasture raised half birds from the venerable Richardson Farms for $7.49/lb and smoked turkeys from a family farm way up the I-35 corridor in southern Minnesota for $5.49/lb. And plenty of Tofurky, Quorn and animal-free options as well.

Wheatsville, not playing the cheap and cheerful game but instead pricing honestly and fairly, with offerings attractive to Austin’s many conscientious shoppers. And Wheatsville also leading the community in food access, with 50% off everyday for fresh produce with SNAP/EBT shoppers using Double Up Food Bucks. Want folks to eat healthier? Make produce free, or as close to free as possible. 50% off is a good start. HEB, are you paying attention? And 83% of the Wheatsville produce assortment is organic, second only to Natural Grocers, but at least 30% higher than Whole Foods, according to their latest ESG report. So Wheatsville for the organic produce win, too.

And Wheatsville’s strange, green dinosaur mascot, inherited from a local pizzeria, still greets shoppers with a toothy grin, little T-rex arms crossed in classic B-boy/B-girl stance like this dinosaur was about to start poppin’ and lockin’.

Austin, Texas, with 80% of grocery marketshare hogged up by Walmart, HEB and Target. Home to Whole Foods Market headquarters. Even Sprouts, formerly a Sun Harvest, across the street. This co-op grocer actually giving thanks and revenue to Native American food sovereignty activists moving the food system forward while preserving their heritage in the face of 400 years of often violent colonization. A cooperative grocery store, with less than 1/10 of 1% local market share, but part of a $2.5 billion a year national purchasing cooperative with costs as low as most corporate chains, stronger together, not afraid to go after the mainstream, offering competitive prices on everyday items and compelling, creative and innovative natural, allergen friendly and organic products. This venerable, stubborn, diverse, queer AF, tattooed, pierced and radically friendly little cooperative winning hearts and minds, winning grocery dollars, winning Thanksgiving.

2. Seen In The Wild.

Central Market’s superb, best in class seasonal apple merchandising, hearkening back to an era before homogenization and monocultures became the norm in grocery stores. Featuring over 2 dozen apple varieties, the most I have ever seen in a U.S. grocery store (with the possible exception of Berkeley Bowl). Why can’t more grocers do this, to support lesser known varieties, give customers choices beyond the usual Gala, Fuji, Granny boredom and just make shopping interesting and fun? Apples FTW.

Also, apples are native to Kazakhstan in Central Asia.

Pick your king. #teamGordon. Or #teamGuy.

3. Guide to Union-Made T-Day:

4. Tunes.

Phil Lynott’s lyrical comfort zones were the streetwise ballads of hustlers, lovers and con artists, along the same thematic lines of Bruce Springsteen, Wu Tang Clan or even Mobb Deep. But Dublin’s favorite son could also drop some serious social justice messaging. Chinatown is an underrated classic and the standout tune Genocide (Killing of the Buffalo) is a message of solidarity still pretty relevant in the age of #Landback and food sovereignty.

peace.