An Open Letter To Whole Foods, Palo Alto
Dear Manager, Whole Foods Palo Alto:
As a customer and shareholder, I enjoy shopping at your store. Granted, given my schedule I have few other choices. Besides, the fresh fruits and vegetables just aren’t quite as good there as they are at your store. That said, I think there is room for improvement, and some learning from competitive organizations.
I realize, of course, that there are some things that are beyond your control, such as the limited parking and the excessively narrow parking spots. I like to look at the parking situation in the best light possible however; that is, as preparation for navigating the narrow and busy aisles in your store. Most of your customers appear to be more careful with their cars than with their carts. More than once is the time that my foot has been run-over by an over-aggressive dad or a short-on-time mom.
First, we should focus on the check-out line. There is plenty of room for improvement here. Your poor checkers are severely over-worked. Clearly you expect them to bag and check even during the busiest of times, such as Saturday at 4pm. Is there a reason you are so frequently short-staffed? Your checkers become frustrated and so too as a result do your customers. I know when the peak times are. Do you?
Why not put out tape so that as customers we can tape the covers of our own salad bar boxes and soup containers? Your checkers spend an inordinate amount of time taping containers, when they should be focused on checking. If it were my store, I would put out tape near the salad bar and the soup stations and make sure the tape dispensers were kept full.
Most infuriating is when a checker asked me if I know the price of a particular item. This has happened on multiple occasions. I’m just a customer and shareholder. I don’t work at Whole Foods. Why do you insist on asking me what the price of an item you are trying to sell me is? Why are there so many items you are willing to sell me that aren’t in your computer system? Please, talk to the head of IT and figure out how to resolve this problem. Imagine if you were running an online store: “sorry, but we can’t sell you this item because we don’t know what it costs.” You’d be out of business.
It’s true that taking one course on operations and a course on modeling has given me some insight into how to run a more efficient system. But it doesn’t take an MBA or PhD from Stanford to figure out that some basic improvements (sufficient staff, tape dispensers, up to date computer systems) would improve your customer service and therefore your customer satisfaction.
Second, how about the custom food area? There is a number dispenser, but the problem is that sometimes it’s in use and sometimes it’s not. Why not install a speaker system and a big number indicator that tells us what number you are on? Maybe you had one and it broke. But either way, it’s frustrating when I have to shout my way in front of other customers to maintain my place in line. Perhaps that says as much about your customer base as it does about you, but your other customers are not something I can do anything about; you are.
Third, do you buy your own fruit and vegetables? I mean, after it’s on the shelves? Yes, you’re better than Safeway, but at least twice a month I find a bunch of out of date containers of dolmas or moldy oranges, and so on. If you were a little more diligent about your own fruit, vegetables, and other fresh food items, you’d have a lot less moldy and expired product sitting on your shelves. Why do you wait so long to put ripening fruit and vegetables on sale when they are clearly past their prime? I mean, check out those avocados. You repeatedly leave them out there and they get softer and softer and… You get the idea.
Or maybe you should consider putting fewer of them out there. I imagine that scarcity is as valuable in the grocery business as elsewhere. If people saw that you only had a few of those special avocados available, they might actually be inclined to buy a few of them. When you throw 250 over-ripe ones on the pile, that’s not a particularly appealing product to buy.
Finally, please consider encouraging people to walk and to shop at less busy times. How about offering some carts for rent? There are many people who would walk if they had an easier way to get their groceries home. Alternatively, how about putting up signs indicating when the peak shopping times are and charging people a premium for shopping at those times or offering a discount or a reward for shopping at other times. Might upset a few people, but it would even out the flow. It’s all about incentives.
Before I let you go, I wanted to add, that, overall, I think you do an excellent job. Maybe corporate just keeps you on an extra small budget and that’s why you’re under-staffed. Or maybe corporate doesn’t like Palo Alto because it’s not one of the new hip stores like they’ve got in Cupertino. I know you and your staff work hard to provide a positive shopping experience for an often rushed customer base. Thank you for considering my feedback.
Yours sincerely,
A loyal customer and shareholder
As a customer and shareholder, I enjoy shopping at your store. Granted, given my schedule I have few other choices. Besides, the fresh fruits and vegetables just aren’t quite as good there as they are at your store. That said, I think there is room for improvement, and some learning from competitive organizations.
I realize, of course, that there are some things that are beyond your control, such as the limited parking and the excessively narrow parking spots. I like to look at the parking situation in the best light possible however; that is, as preparation for navigating the narrow and busy aisles in your store. Most of your customers appear to be more careful with their cars than with their carts. More than once is the time that my foot has been run-over by an over-aggressive dad or a short-on-time mom.
First, we should focus on the check-out line. There is plenty of room for improvement here. Your poor checkers are severely over-worked. Clearly you expect them to bag and check even during the busiest of times, such as Saturday at 4pm. Is there a reason you are so frequently short-staffed? Your checkers become frustrated and so too as a result do your customers. I know when the peak times are. Do you?
Why not put out tape so that as customers we can tape the covers of our own salad bar boxes and soup containers? Your checkers spend an inordinate amount of time taping containers, when they should be focused on checking. If it were my store, I would put out tape near the salad bar and the soup stations and make sure the tape dispensers were kept full.
Most infuriating is when a checker asked me if I know the price of a particular item. This has happened on multiple occasions. I’m just a customer and shareholder. I don’t work at Whole Foods. Why do you insist on asking me what the price of an item you are trying to sell me is? Why are there so many items you are willing to sell me that aren’t in your computer system? Please, talk to the head of IT and figure out how to resolve this problem. Imagine if you were running an online store: “sorry, but we can’t sell you this item because we don’t know what it costs.” You’d be out of business.
It’s true that taking one course on operations and a course on modeling has given me some insight into how to run a more efficient system. But it doesn’t take an MBA or PhD from Stanford to figure out that some basic improvements (sufficient staff, tape dispensers, up to date computer systems) would improve your customer service and therefore your customer satisfaction.
Second, how about the custom food area? There is a number dispenser, but the problem is that sometimes it’s in use and sometimes it’s not. Why not install a speaker system and a big number indicator that tells us what number you are on? Maybe you had one and it broke. But either way, it’s frustrating when I have to shout my way in front of other customers to maintain my place in line. Perhaps that says as much about your customer base as it does about you, but your other customers are not something I can do anything about; you are.
Third, do you buy your own fruit and vegetables? I mean, after it’s on the shelves? Yes, you’re better than Safeway, but at least twice a month I find a bunch of out of date containers of dolmas or moldy oranges, and so on. If you were a little more diligent about your own fruit, vegetables, and other fresh food items, you’d have a lot less moldy and expired product sitting on your shelves. Why do you wait so long to put ripening fruit and vegetables on sale when they are clearly past their prime? I mean, check out those avocados. You repeatedly leave them out there and they get softer and softer and… You get the idea.
Or maybe you should consider putting fewer of them out there. I imagine that scarcity is as valuable in the grocery business as elsewhere. If people saw that you only had a few of those special avocados available, they might actually be inclined to buy a few of them. When you throw 250 over-ripe ones on the pile, that’s not a particularly appealing product to buy.
Finally, please consider encouraging people to walk and to shop at less busy times. How about offering some carts for rent? There are many people who would walk if they had an easier way to get their groceries home. Alternatively, how about putting up signs indicating when the peak shopping times are and charging people a premium for shopping at those times or offering a discount or a reward for shopping at other times. Might upset a few people, but it would even out the flow. It’s all about incentives.
Before I let you go, I wanted to add, that, overall, I think you do an excellent job. Maybe corporate just keeps you on an extra small budget and that’s why you’re under-staffed. Or maybe corporate doesn’t like Palo Alto because it’s not one of the new hip stores like they’ve got in Cupertino. I know you and your staff work hard to provide a positive shopping experience for an often rushed customer base. Thank you for considering my feedback.
Yours sincerely,
A loyal customer and shareholder
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