Whole Foods in Tarzana: charity as a marketing tool

This week a bag was left hanging on the mailbox and it was from Whole Foods in Tarzana, which is making its play to attract Encino customers.

Having shopped there already I can say it has an impressive selection of just about everything you could want, but it’s expensive. This is the place for people looking for organics, gluten-free and allergy-free foods or fancy European beers. However I see it as more of an occasional destination for us and I wasn’t a fan of the underground parking or café area.

The bag on the mailbox was interesting because it took several minutes to figure out what it was saying. Obviously it can be used for shopping and it can be folded up and carried around. But the message on the bag said: FEED THE CHILDREN OF THE WORLD. How, I wondered? The bag “will provide 100 nutritious school meals for hungry children through the U.N. World Food Program (WFP).” The label said: “This is more than a bag. It’s an opportunity for you to join a movement… For more information on WFP or to make a donation visit www.wfp.org.” At that website it says: “In 2010, WFP aims to provide food assistance to more than 90 million people in 73 countries.”

Presumably Whole Foods funded this outreach for the World Food Program. It’s interesting because Whole Foods got its start with supporting local farmers and seasonal produce and it is now much more internationalist in outlook. This is to be encouraged given there is so much bashing of the U.N. these days. Their own charity, Whole Planet Foundation, supports microcredit loans for “poor women in developing world communities that supply Whole Food Market stores with product.” Sounds great.