[czstrong]

I recently went to Wal-Mart for the first time in Bloomington, IN, where I go to school. It's a bit of a drive but we decided to make the trip to save some money on household items. It was one of the bigger Wal-Marts I've seen and it looked fairly new. As we were leaving we decided to check out the supermarket section. Boy were we surprised.

The selection of fresh produce was about twice the size of what you could find at the local Kroger and even better than our local organic grocery store that gets its food from local farmers. They had a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and they were presented very nicely. We found pre-packaged chicken breasts with no additives, no antibiotics or hormones, and that were fed a purely vegetarian diet; they were quite tasty and pretty cheap. The store was very clean and bright and it was a fairly pleasant experience to shop there. I like to eat things that are good for me and I usually don't mind spending more for them, but after my experience in the store and now after knowing that some of that produce has come from local farms, I think I will be doing a lot more of my grocery shopping at Wal-Mart.

[ajross]

The selection of fresh produce was [...] even better than our local organic grocery store that gets its food from local farmers.

Not sure why that would be surprising. Buying from local farmers inherently means limiting yourself to local crops. So for example no southern hemisphere crops in the off season, no tropical crops of any kind, etc... Expanding one's options to be able to fly stuff in from anywhere in the world is always going to improve selection.

The complaints about non-local food are about things like sustainability, pesticide regulation, energy budget, etc... No one sane claims it doesn't taste good.

[kiddo]

Actually, a lot of people complain that non-local food doesn't taste good. Local food is usually picked closer to being ripe and usually arrives in the store or market sooner after being picked. For both of these reasons it should taste better.

[ajross]

Obviously depends on crop and circumstance. What you say is often true. That said: if it's early spring and I have the choice between an Oregon-grown apple and a flown-in New Zealand Fuji (or Chilean/Peruvian asparagus, often available and yummy during the winter), there's really no contest.

Does that make it "good" to eat the airborne food? Certainly not by many measures. But you can't just pretend that "local == better" if you want to win arguments either.

[bmalicoat]

I've never had a bad shopping experience at Walmart, well not one that was within Walmart's control, but that's not really the reason most people dislike them. The real problem is on the supply side, Walmart is so massive that supplying them can make or break your company. So if getting a contract means your margins are razor thin you do it even if it may not be a very good long term strategy. People don't like Walmart because they squeeze everything out of their suppliers and then move on to a new supplier.

Now granted you could view this as the suppliers not being efficient or smart enough but in a non-Walmart monopoly world they would have easily survived.

Pretty good Fast Company article on their negotiation techniques: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

[nazgulnarsil]

im sorry, but are we assuming that suppliers are inherently worthy of business? if wal-mart is slowly squeezing out inefficient suppliers in favor of more efficient ones everyone is winning.

[dwiel]

Fancy seeing another person from Bloomington, IN here!

I applaud Wal-mart for making local food more accessible. There are plenty of places that could use more cheap produce in their towns.

It's understandable that Bloomingfoods (the local organic grocery store) is so expensive since they are paying for the prime retail location space in town compared to Wal-Mart which is out in the county. You are paying for the luxury of walking or biking to their stores - Wal-mart is only accessible by Car or Bus. Trading convenience for price.

For a slightly different trade-off, there are about 40 or 50 people who just started buying in a food buying club once a month directly from the distributor that Bloomingfoods buys from (UNFI). They don't have much in the way of local fresh produce (we get that from the farmer's markets and CSAs), but the canned goods, bulk items and hosehold items are typically between 30-50% cheaper than Bloomingfoods and the pickup is right in town. If you are interested, let me know and I can get you the info.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

chicken breasts with no additives, no antibiotics or hormones, and that were fed a purely vegetarian diet

Not to quibble, but this is nothing to be proud of: chickens are omnivores and scarf down anything they can fit in their beaks.

[jseifer]

Exactly! I cringe at vegetarian fed chicken and red meat, which usually means some type of corn. That stuff is impossible to avoid.

[notauser]

I think they must have bought some people over from ASDA in the UK - a chain they bought a while ago.

I used to go to Walmart in Texas every now and again and it was not a good experience. Now the ones I have been in are starting to pick up elements that look suspiciously like they were lifted from ASDA - especially the produce section. The local produce product line has been running for a while in the UK (both buy-British and buy-regional) for example.

It seemed odd at the time because the UK grocery market seems to be a pretty bad business to buy into with 4/5 large and reasonably evenly matched competitors that are so close to saturation point that nearly all areas are served by 2+ big and 3+ small stores.

(Equally the UK Walmart stores are getting more like the American ones in the non-food section.)

[drinian]

Just wait until Wegmans comes to your area. They're fantastic, except for the fact that it takes an enormous number of customers to sort one, and so are usually surrounded by parking-lot oceans.