Whole Foods Detroit

About a week after their grand opening in Midtown, Detroit, Scottie and I finally visited our favorite grocery store, Whole Foods!  While we normally venture outside of Birmingham to the Whole Foods in Troy, we had a perfect excuse to visit this new store as we picked up some appetizers and drinks to bring to a BBQ.

This is now the sixth Whole Foods in Michigan, but this latest store in making national headlines for several reasons:

• It's the first national grocery chain to open in the city of Detroit since 2007
• They've hired 94 people, 70% of them local Detroit residents
• They will carry a lot of local products from smaller, local producers as well as some of the more well-known Michigan producers like Avalon Breads and McClure's Pickles
• They've employed local artists to paint Detroit-themed murals on the walls
• They are working with their competition over at Eastern Market to obtain local farmer's produce and products

Many people often refer to Whole Foods as a "whole paycheck" due to its higher prices, but there's certainly a reason behind the higher prices when they carry a lot of organic, natural, non-GMO, local products.  Many of these products are not mass-produced by companies that can afford to charge a lot less for their products, but a local farmer can only cut so much.  The surprising factor for us was that in the Detroit Whole Foods, prices actually seemed more reasonable than our Troy store.  

We were definitely not disappointed by this new store, and in fact, we were a little jealous of the updated layout and prepared foods counters that are missing in our store.  Hopefully, they're remodel the Troy store soon!