Organic food stores are on a natural high
Organic and natural foods are arrayed alluringly on shelves in the Whole Foods Market store at Columbus Circle in New York. There is Pecorino Pepato sheep's milk cheese and chicken fed on a vegetarian diet (“No antibiotics ever!”). In the wine section, Manhattanites listen to Billie Holiday while picking bottles from small vineyards across America.
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It all comes at a price. Whole Foods Market, the fastest-growing US food retailer, is known as Whole Paycheck, after what it costs to shop there. That has not held it back. Retail spending is sluggish and Wal-Mart's sales have suffered as low-income families face higher petrol prices. But lawyers, bankers and other professionals still have money to spend.
Despite its elite fare, the Whole Foods Market in Columbus Circle is 10 times the size of world's first supermarket, the King Kullen store that opened in the New York borough of Queens in 1930. Michael Cullen, its founder had worked at Kroger, then a neighbourhood chain, and realised the opportunity that lay in mass food retailing. King Kullen's slogan was “Pile it High. Sell it Low.”
In recent years, US supermarkets have suffered at the hands of Wal-Mart, which has piled it higher and sold it lower. Chains such as Albertsons, Kroger and Safeway have struggled against the growth of Supercentres Wal-Mart's combined food, clothing, furnishing and hardware outlets. The supermarkets have cut prices and their efforts to reduce wage costs have led to labour disputes.
Now they are being attacked from the top end. Sales of organic food are rising at 20 per cent a year and there is an appetite for fish, meat, fruit and vegetables that taste good. The stock market has noticed: although Whole Foods Market has only 150 stores compared with Safeway's 1,800 outlets, its market capitalisation of $5.3bn is over half of Safeway's $9bn.
Whole Foods Market owes its rise to a shift in wealth and spending power in the US. Households with income of more than $100,000 a year represent 22 per cent of aggregate income, compared with 18 per cent a decade ago. That has helped retailers such as Neiman Marcus, the luxury store group, to expand rapidly while mid-market and discount retail groups have faced slower sales growth.
John Mackey, chief executive and co-founder of Whole Foods Market, told a Goldman Sachs investor conference last week that the company was at a tipping point. “We are no longer just appealing to crunchy granola types. Soccer moms are starting to shop in our stores. We actually have some Republicans shopping in our stores these days, which is very upsetting to many of our core customers.”
He was only half-joking. The writer David Brooks has lampooned the latte-drinking inhabitants of the “blue states” that voted Democrat in the last presidential election. Whole Food Market is doing for food what Starbucks did for coffee: it has mixed ingredients and service in a way that appeals to professionals who fancy themselves as gourmets.
The company knows which side its wholemeal bread is buttered. The company comes from Texas, but the college town of Austin rather than the oil cities of Dallas or Houston. Eighty per cent of its customers have degrees and it judges markets by the density of university-educated people: its first store outside Texas was in Palo Alto, home of Stanford University.
The result is that supermarket chains are falling down the gap between red and blue America. Their packaged goods have not been cheap enough to compete with Wal-Mart and their fresh produce has not been of sufficient quality to satisfy those who will pay for the best. Indeed, they have been slower to respond to such trends than their counterparts in Europe, particularly the UK.
The supermarkets are scrambling to catch up. Safeway has emerged from a gruelling labour dispute in southern California and is trying simultaneously to cut prices on its packaged goods and improve the quality of its fresh food. It has been remodelling its stores to make more space for delicatessens and bakeries: “Safeway will become synonymous with quality,” says Steve Burd, its chief executive.
Well, maybe. It is possible for supermarkets to span the gap between discount and premium goods. Tesco has shown that it can be done in the UK: it offers everything from low-price staple foods to organic meat and fish in the same stores, as well as selling clothing. But US supermarkets have conceded too much for comfort at both ends of the business.
Furthermore, while Wal-Mart is a more obvious threat than Whole Foods Market, it at least is a familiar one. Since the first King Kullen was built, supermarkets have grown steadily bigger in order to compete: Kroger soon adopted its former employee's format when it worked. It is less clear that supermarkets can change into high-quality speciality stores simply by adding some more departments.
By offering more of everything, they are in danger of becoming the food equivalent of department stores, which struggle against clothing and hardware speciality outlets. Even in the UK, Tesco flourishes but rivals such as J. Sainsbury are still caught between their upmarket customers and those who demand low prices.
Meanwhile, Whole Foods Market surges onward with its organic fruits and rare cheeses. It now has eight outlets in west Los Angeles, some less than a mile apart. If Michael Cullen were alive, he would recognise what Wal-Mart is doing to his invention. But what would he make of a store that is beating supermarkets by piling it low and selling it high?
美国市场刮起“有机食品”风
位于纽约市哥伦布环形路上的全食超市(Whole Foods Market)里，货架上的有机天然食品排列整齐，很是诱人。有佩科里诺胡椒羊乳干酪和素食喂养的鸡（“从未添加抗生素！”），在葡萄酒专柜，曼哈顿区人在比莉?哈乐黛(Billie Holiday)的背景歌曲中，挑选着出自全美各家小葡萄园的酒。
所有这一切都是有代价的。鉴于全食超市的价格高昂，人们把这家发展最为迅猛的食品零售公司称作“高额支票”(Whole Paycheck)。但这并没有阻止公司发展。零售支出市场萧条，沃尔玛(Wal-Mart)的销售量也因低收入家庭面临较高的汽油价格而受挫。不过，律师、银行家和其他专业人士仍然有钱可花。
尽管经营上品食品，但位于哥伦布环形路上的全食超市规模仍是金库伦商店(King Kullen store)的10倍之多，后者是全世界首家超级市场，于1930年在纽约皇后区开张。金库伦的创办人迈克尔?库伦(Michael Cullen)曾在克罗格商店(Kroger)工作，该商店当时还只是一个街坊连锁店，他意识到大规模食品零售所蕴藏的商机。金库伦的口号是“囤货多、价格低”(Pile it High. Sell it Low)。
近年来，沃尔玛的货品种类更加繁多，销售价格也更加便宜，使美国各家超级市场受到打击。由于沃尔玛零售店的货品种类包括食品、服装、家居装饰和五金产品，诸如阿尔伯特逊(Albertsons)、克罗格和赛福维(Safeway)等连锁商店都由于上述超级购物中心的发展而苦苦挣扎。各超级市场已降低价格，并意欲削减工资成本，但却引发劳工纠纷。
现在它们正受到来自上层消费市场的打击。有机食品销售量每年以20%的幅度增加，人们对美味的鱼类、肉类、水果及蔬菜很有兴趣。这在股票市场也有所反映：与赛福维的1800家商店相比，尽管全食超市只有150家商店，但其市值却有53亿美元，超过赛福维90亿美元市值的一半。
全食超市的崛起得益于美国财富和支出能力的变化，年收入超过10万美元的家庭代表收入总数的22%，而十年前该比例仅为18%。这使奢侈品商店集团内曼马可(Neiman Marcus)等零售商得以迅速扩展，而中间市场和折扣零售集团的销售量则增长缓慢。
全食超市首席执行官及共同创办人约翰?麦基(John Mackey)上周在高盛集团(Goldman Sachs)的一个投资者大会上表示：公司正位于一个引爆点。“我们吸引的不再仅仅是富裕的上层社会。工薪阶层妇女也开始来我们商店购物。近来还有些共和党人来购物，这让我们许多核心顾客感到非常不开心。”
他只是在半开玩笑而已。作家戴维?布鲁克斯(David Brooks)曾经嘲讽过“蓝色州”(blue states)喝拿铁咖啡的人士，这些人在上届总统大选中将票投给了民主党。全食超市公司目前销售食品的做法就如同星巴克(Starbucks)出售咖啡一样：它所提供的配料和服务非常独特，专吸引那些自诩为是美食家的专业人士。
该公司明白自己的利益所在。公司发源于德克萨斯州学院城奥斯汀，而不是达拉斯或休斯顿等石油城。其顾客中有80%的人都持有学位，公司也根据受到大学教育人口的密度来评价市场：该公司在德州之外的第一家商店位于斯坦福大学所在地帕洛阿尔托。
结果是：超市连锁店正跌入美国共和党和民主派之间的沟壑。超市包装商品的价格尚未便宜到可与沃尔玛相抗衡，新鲜农产品质量也未能满足那些愿意花钱买最好产品的人。的确，较之欧洲尤其是英国的同业，他们对此类趋势的反应较慢。
超级市场正奋起直追。赛福维已经从让人难以忍受的南加州劳工纠纷中解脱出来，正试图削减包装商品价格，同时也改进新鲜食品质量。该公司已经在对各商店进行改造，为熟食部和面包房腾出更多空间。公司首席执行官斯蒂夫?伯德(Steve Burd)表示：“赛福维将成为优质的同义词。”
嗯，也许吧。超级市场要跨越折扣商品与优质商品之间的沟壑还是有可能的。特易购集团(Tesco)已显示，这在英国是可能的：同一家商店提供的商品包罗万象，从低价位的主食到有机肉类和鱼类，还有服装。然而美国超市为取悦业界两端顾客做出太大让步。
此外，尽管威胁甚过全食超市，但来自沃尔玛的威胁却至少不太陌生。自从第一家金库伦商店开办以来，为了竞争，超市已经稳步壮大起来：在库伦这位前职员的模式奏效之际，克罗格也很快加以采用。超市能否仅仅通过增加一些部门就转变为高质量的专卖店，目前尚不清楚。
如果提供更多各类商品，超市却有可能成为相当于百货商店的食品店，难以与服装及五金专卖店相抗衡。即使在英国，特易购兴旺发达，可是诸如约?圣斯伯雷(J. Sainsbury)等竞争对手却仍然夹在上流市场顾客和要求低价格的顾客中间，进退两难。
与此同时，全食超市凭着有机水果和稀有奶酪突飞猛进。该公司在西洛杉矶现有八家商店，有些仅一英里之隔。假如迈克尔?库伦在世，他能看出沃尔玛正对他所创建商店的影响。然而，对一个靠囤货少价格高而击败超级市场的商店，他又做何解释呢？
