Local Is Global At Kimberton.

Also: The Policy Shift That Decimated Local Grocers.

Dec 09, 2024

Discontents: 1. Local Is Global At Kimberton. 2. The Policy Shift That Decimated Local Grocery Stores. 3. Philly Whole Foods Union Update. 4. Tunes.

1. Local Is Global At Kimberton.

I miss my grocery store. Weird? Maybe. I am on the road for a few weeks, so I haven’t been back in the Philly area since October. We had to leave Philly during the peak season for fall colors and some of my favorite produce and come back to Austin, which was still in the throes of summer. Now that I have been down south for a few weeks, I actually keep wondering what they have in stock at my local Kimberton, what I am missing out on. It is not as though I am monogamous when it comes to groceries. In the Philly area I go to Wegman’s, Mom’s, Aldi, Whole Foods, or Sprouts if I am desperate. And Austin has no shortage of great grocers, HEB, H-Mart, Wheatsville, TJ’s, Whole Foods, and yeah, Sprouts. But my favorite local grocer lately is Kimberton Whole Foods.

Kimberton is a seven, soon to be eight store chain in Southeastern Pennsylvania, mostly between Philly and Reading in the outer suburbs, exurbs, college towns and occasional downtown redevelopments. They have a cool little history, starting out as a farm store on the same farm as iconic biodynamic yogurt maker Seven Stars. They are still family owned and have a great reputation as an ethical employer. The staff is wonderful, always friendly, helpful and tuned in, like a textbook old school natural foods or neighborhood grocery store, a dying breed in many ways. And the stores are beautiful, clean, bright and tightly merchandised, a pleasure to browse, shop or grab a snack. I miss going there when I am out of town.

The entryway to my local Kimberton has a big sunflower logo over case stacks of packaged foods that they rotate out every week or two. My emotional association of it is happiness, chillness. My last visit in October saw a fun mix of seasonal snacks, pumpkin spice popcorn, Halloween lollipops, organic tortilla chips and some spice apple seltzer in the foyer. Cute, but I will stick with my usual grapefruit fizzies.

Produce is the real draw for me. Living in Texas for so many years I was always happy to get some fresh local, organic produce in the late fall and early winter, when I was also growing plenty of my own. Summer usually meant piles of squash, okra, tomatoes, peppers, nightshades, nightshades. Most of the organic stuff in Texas is usually from California or occasionally the Rio Grande Valley, 6 hours south of Austin. There are very few local, organic farms left in the Austin area. It is too hot, the weather too erratic, the land too expensive. So it was fun to be back on the East Coast during peak season. Pennsylvania does not get near enough credit for its produce bounty. It is a cornucopia.

The Pennsylvania agriculture system is among the top 5 in the U.S. It has strong support in state government and impressive market penetration in stores; markets require government intervention, as I have documented. PCO is a great certifier. Pennsylvania is also a top 5 organic consumer area. Their abundant locally grown organic selection is decades ahead of Texas, especially when so much of it is grown so close to major metro areas like Philly, Reading and Southern New Jersey.

Kimberton regularly stocks local and organic mustard greens, dill, fennel, leeks, kale, lettuce, collards and bok choy from Lancaster Farm Fresh Co-op, an organic farmer co-op of 100 small farms growing some of the best food on the East Coast. They also have a nice selection of mushrooms, as this area of Pennsylvania is the mushroom growing capital of the U.S. There are local, organic winter squash, including my favorites, honeynut and kabocha, as well as piles of purple potatoes. I love making purple homefries, like some Dr. Suess breakfast. But my local favorite product at Kimberton has been the five pound bags of IPM Macintosh apples. The apples are stellar, pretty much perfect. I am an East Coast apple loyalist, no offense to eastern Washington or Northern California. But Macintosh, Macoun, Empires, Romes, those are my jam. Really, nothing beats the crisp, tart bite of an early fall Mac. Organic is a plus. And the more locally grown the better. They really don’t travel well.

Locally grown tends to be a stand-in for ethical consumption, even though it really doesn’t mean much of anything anymore. I once gave an interview to The Guardian about that and did not hold back. In Kimberton’s case, localism is more holistic. It points to new economic relationships, prioritizing fairness, quality and sustainability. But these ethics are also globalized for the stores, epitomized by two large displays of Equal Exchange organic produce, avocados on sale for a market leading 2/$4 each, and a big stack of bananas at .89/lb. Equal Exchange is a worker owned cooperative that practices solidarity economics, an economic model that has evolved past rapacious capitalism and bureaucratic state socialism, instead prioritizing truly fair trading arrangements with producers, who are usually small scale farmer cooperatives in the Global South. They were ahead of the curve in the fair trade movement way back in the 1990’s when I brought their coffee into my university’s little food co-op. And Equal Exchange subsequently moved beyond fair trade when the bigger fair trade certifier got too cozy with Walmart, deemphasizing the sense of agency and economic fairness that empowers Global South farmers to have equal bargaining power in buyer-seller transactions, in favor of a more vague, woke-corporate-multistakeholder-NGO-philanthropism. Imagine that. Yet, here we are, local produce, global produce, fairly traded, reasonably priced. It is possible, y’all.

The packaged food aisles of Kimberton technically start in produce as well, with a few doors of packaged salads, organic sprouted veggies and various shrink wrapped pickled beets. Lots of packaged beets. CPG beets. Beets are cool again? You are not pissing blood, you just ate beets for lunch.

Kimberton also won a special place in my heart for putting raw nuts and seeds in a cooler. It’s really not that hard to do. You just need a cooler. And nuts. All those shelf stable, packaged, pre-pack nuts and seeds you get at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Kroger, etc., tend to be rancid if they have been on shelf for more than a few days. Sniff test next time you buy. Only a handful of grocers merchandise nuts and seeds correctly, especially Natural Grocers. The quality difference, taste, smell, bite, are palpable if you buy and eat fresh nuts and seeds regularly. The prices are also not terribly high for the quality, so my guess is that they are taking a more modest markup by ringing the products up to refrigerated grocery, which tends to have lower margin targets (30-35%) than bulk grocery (45-50%). Or I could be wrong. I love being wrong. That’s how I learn new things.

Packaged grocery takes up about half of the store, starting with a standalone set of salad dressings, the usual suspects, Annie’s, Primal, Chosen, Newman’s, facing an impressive set of beans and canned veggies. Kimberton is flexing their value muscles with a big stack of $1.29 organic Made With beans, a great price in any market, with quality leader Eden Foods beans on sale at 2/$5. And yes, the CEO of Eden is a bit polarizing, but Eden makes some of the highest quality products out there, so pick your battles. Competitors at Campbell’s and General Mills appreciate your business too. The store also has a nice run of Amy’s soups on sale at 2/$7, line priced with Pacific soups at 2/$7. Nice, effective INFRA deals, nationally negotiated, locally executed. I love Fall merchandising. Soups, beans, warm, soft and yummy comfort foods because I am old and tired.

Kimberton does not have a full service butcher case in this store, which helps keep costs, and therefore retail prices, down. Oddly, I always seem to shop when the staff is stocking the meat cooler. The stuff must sell well. The meat set includes some local grassfed cuts from farms in the area, as well as grassfed beef from Thousand Hills and organic, pasture-raised chickens from Farmer Focus in the Shenandoah Valley. They also have pork, but I grew up kosher and I always forget to notice the pork assortment in stores, just a habitual blindspot. Treif, ya know?

Like any local grocer worth their salt, Kimberton has an epic local honey selection, wildflower, golden rod, blueberry, buckwheat, in jars, tubs and chubby honey bear squeeze bottles. This is America, though, so I always worry about herbicide residues in local honey, like glyphosate or paraquat or who the heck knows what some of these local, non-organic farms are spraying. My friends, have you ever gone to Tractor Supply? Huge stacks of herbicides. So it is always a trade-off, because organic honey needs vast areas for the bees to pollinate, meaning most organic honey is from way out in Canada or Mexico or Brazil, very not local. In the meantime, I am enjoying some local buckwheat honey from up the road and trying not to think of RoundUp.

Nut butters include some in-store packed peanut butters, a full shelf of Hormel-owned Justin’s and two and a half shelves of employee-owned Once Again, what a natural food store should be selling instead of piles of private label. Too much private label just gets boring and generic, variety is nice folks. If I want private label, I just go to Aldi up the road. It’s cheaper there.

Speaking of private label, Kimberton is a UNFI customer, so they have plenty of Field Day products, including a broad selection of paper goods. I stopped drinking coffee a while back but I do admire the selection of Equal Exchange coffees at $9.99 alongside the cheaper Field Day set. Those UNFI folks have really sharpened their private label strategy in recent years.

The store has an impressive cheese section, with dozens of varieties of local and regional cow and goat cheeses. It is the east coast, so they also have an above average selection of mozzarella, including burrata, pearls, big one pound blobs and neatly sliced options. Likewise, they have a modest charcuterie section of salt cured pork products, including Volpi, Applegate and Niman. Yes, also treif. Kimberton has a small hot bar/prepared food selection but it is not a big draw. The rotisserie chickens are good quality but at $14.99 priced too high to justify a regular purchase. Similar items at Whole Foods are practically half the price.

Kimberton does have a small but epic bagged snack selection, with many varieties of bagged potato, tortilla, root veggie and other salted chips, alongside cheese curls, pretzels, popcorn, snap pea crisps and all the other slightly less processed, nutrient deficient starch bombs that no one should really live without. Remember, this is a natural foods store, not a health foods store, they sell slightly less terrible ultra-processed foods. I was especially impressed with the assortment of Lesser Evil popcorns, with the strange culturally appropriated buddha figures. and the many skus of potato chips NOT owned by Frito Lay, including my faves, Campbell’s Cape Cod and indie brand Ugly Chips. Big win for economic diversity in a section usually monopolized by Pepsico.

The store was small and did not have room for a big freezer set, but they made efficient use of the space. Highlights included several shelves of Beyond Meat products, a shelf of Meati’s extruded fungal patties that are essentially a modern updating of Quorn’s products, and plenty of Amy’s frozen entrees and pizzas. They had many of the other usual suspects ubiquitous in natural and specialty grocery channel freezer doors, including special diet options from Feel Good Foods, Snow Days, Caulipower and Daiya. They had a neat and tight ice cream set too, with plenty of Alec’s, Talenti, Tillamook, Strauss Organic, Van Leeuwen and non-dairy skus from So Delicious, Goodpop and Jolly Llama. Natural foods store. Not a health foods store.

The UNFI influence was also felt in frozen, with a full door each of frozen fruits and veggies from Woodstock, the wholesaler’s higher end private label. The store also had some really local and high-quality eggs from area farmers, with cute signage and pictures calling out each of these suppliers. Yogurt was a small section, which is odd because yogurt sections are huge at mainstream grocery stores. Kimberton stocks many of the best-selling specialty yogurt and non-dairy brands, including Nancy’s, Coconut Cult, Siggi’s and Cocojune, but stayed away from the price war temptations of Chobani and other mass market brands. They did stock local, organic Seven Stars, because of course! And they had plenty of fermented veggies, including kimchis, krauts and pickles. And Pumfu. Pumpkin seed tofu! That stuff is so cool. Soy-free and nutrient dense, just add flavor. For real, though, I love Pumfu.

The store also had a freshly stocked and rotated bread set, with dozens of items from local bakeries, including rolls and baguettes and bagels and pitas as well as loaves, cupcakes and muffins. It made this side of the store smell warm and freshly baked, even though they were also selling plenty of mass market items like Dave’s Killer and Nature’s Own, but it was good see a balance of options for their customers.

The drink case was pretty cool, with lots of weird shit that the kids love these days, and not just kombucha, which they had plenty of. Of course they had Poppi and Olipop, the skibiddy Gen Z versions of Coke and Pepsi, just with more stomach discomfort and misleading marketing claims. But it still beats high fructose corn syrup or aspartame loaded junk any day. They had a shelf of Seth Goldman’s Just Ice Tea, his post-Coca-Cola-acquired-Honest-Tea-then-discontinued-it-because-they-are-greedy-lame-o’s pet project that in my view actually tastes better than Honest Tea. The cold deli case was modest but had a few items that I started buying regularly, including the egg salad, potato salad and the tofu egg salad, as well as Café Spice entrees. They also had two varieties of special diet donuts, including Glonuts and my fave, Drumroll. Because it is ok to eat donuts especially when the donuts don’t kill you.

HBC led with a big Dr. Bronners display of their new re-fill containers, of course, so on brand for Kimberton. Bronners runs a similar supply chain as Equal Exchange, beyond corporate-fair-trade-wokeness, and actually, verifiably, authentically ethical and sustainable. And big sections of essential oils and homepathics. Don’t be a hater, some folks swear by homeopathics. I think they are a harmless complimentary option to mainstream medicine, but I also like my over the counter meds. Call me integrative.

Kimberton also has its own line of reasonably prices, decent quality vitamins and supplements. But the highlight of HBC was a huge assortment of protein powders, including some cool local and emerging brands. There must be a lot of committed weight trainers and fitness enthusiasts shopping these stores for this stuff, considering the space and inventory commitments were a lot bigger than the small protein bar set. They had more popular brands like Nestle-owned Orgain, as well as Om, Tera’s, Nestle-owned Garden of Life, Sunwarrior, and Truvani, owned by #MAHA-enthusiast and “Food Babe” Vani Hari, along with old school brands that never sold out to Nestle, like Spirutein and Now Foods.

The café was small and cozy, framed by a classy wooden pergola on two sides that gave the seating area a sense of privacy and separation from the retail floor. The numerous cashiers and floor staff have all been friendly and helpful in my trips there, engaging me in conversation every time I was checking out (no self-checkout B.S. here) even talking up local sights and restaurants when they found out I was new to the scene. The register POP areas had plenty of natural and organic candies and snacks and a sign above the registers highlighting the Kimberton donation matches to local nonprofits, totally over $80,000 when I was last there. The outer foyer held piles of local pumpkins and flowers picked before the first freeze, bringing me back full circle to the seasonality and sentiment of why I became so enamored of this shop.

Even retail, with its industrialized, globalized supply chains, high tech inventory management, work-intensive retail operations, nationally-negotiated sale pricing- yes, even retail, can have a sense of place and be a model of economic fairness. And that sense of place is not just being an island of localism, but instead an endpoint of sustainable, ethical, and regional-focused value chains that also apply the same standards to globally sourced products, that extend the same sense of community you see and feel in the store out to the world.

It is possible to be a grocery store and not have the sensibility of a strip mine. It is a viable enterprise model to not mine your customers’ data and not mine your employees’ energy and lifeforce and make them feel burnt out and valueless. Or make your suppliers feel like they have no choice but to do business only on your terms. I know it is not easy, but Kimberton makes it seem easy. To be the change they are making in the world, even if it is just a small change, tweaking supply chains and relationships. But it works, and they are growing, thankfully. I like shopping there and I miss it when I am out of town. And I am looking forward to getting back there soon.

2. The Policy Shift That Decimated Local Grocery Stores.

Great report from ILSR:

“For decades — from the 1930s until the 1980s — the U.S. grocery industry was remarkably competitive, with independent grocers thriving alongside large chains like Kroger and Safeway. Independent stores consistently accounted for more than 50 percent of grocery sales throughout this period. Meanwhile the four largest chains collectively captured only about 20 percent of the market.”

3. Philly Whole Foods Union

Speaking of strip-mining your employees, here is a shout out to the Philly Whole Foods union campaign fighting back against rampant misinformation from Amazon.