EatingIsImportant
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Walking Is Important

Where does Whole Foods make their prepared foods?

2/25/2016

3 Comments

 
PictureNot my Whole Foods. This one is prettier.
 I shop at Whole Foods.  Not all the time, but probably about twice a month.  And this embarrasses me-- the store we used to make fun of as "Whole Paycheck," the place where you can buy caviar for $80/can and most of the patrons are, er, exceedingly well-groomed.  Better than me, anyway.  Plus, it's a giant company with CEOs that compare Obamacare to fascism and are just generally way more conservative than you would expect.

Nevertheless, in my particular neck of the woods-- which is near a major city and certainly has more grocery options than most places-- the local Whole Foods just has some advantages over other stores.  It's pretty close to one-stop-shopping, so for a really big trip it's one of a limited number of choices.  It certainly has more natural foods and gourmet foods available than the Safeway or the Giant or the big international groceries like the New Grand Mart.  If I need a special cheese or cut of meat I know I will find it there.  But there is one advantage Whole Foods appears to have that I have found largely illusory.  And that is its vast variety of beautiful, colorful prepared foods, arrayed in multiple hot bars and cold salad bars and deli cases.  Everything looks amazing (and costs an arm and a leg).  And very little of it actually lives up to its promise.

In my experience, assembling your own salad is safe, as is ordering a pre-fab sandwich or wrap from the deli.  The pizza is okay, and I've had a few other great items: quesadillas, a vegetable dish or two, things I can't remember now.  And this discussion is in no way meant to cast aspersions on their bakery, which I view as a separate entity and is terrific.  But, there have been also many disappointments, including:
  • blah rotisserie chicken
  • bland soups galore
  • meat curries and vegetables on the hot bar that look great but are seasoned poorly and just don't taste good
  • undercooked vegetables in hot and cold dishes
  • salad dressings/marinades that, again, are seasoned in such a way that they don't taste good
  • extremely dry and underseasoned roast beef, chicken and salmon from the deli
  • sushi rice that is underseasoned
  • deli salads that are colorful and beautiful and don't taste good
You see my theme.  It is as though a group of untrained cooks were given a series of photographs rather than recipes, and instructed to produce food to match.  The colors are vibrant!  The food glistens!  But the herbs and spices and aromatics that make everything look delicious and wholesome seem actually applied at random, while cooking times are wrong too: things are dry that should be moist, things are crunchy that should be tender.  My family agrees: oh, no, you got dinner from Whole Foods again?  If it turns out to be at all a positive experience, they are pleasantly surprised.  Yet it costs as much or more as getting restaurant takeout.  (But I keep doing it.  It's so beautiful and easy!  How can I resist?)

Picture
The photos they work from.
Picture
PictureAlso not my Whole Foods.
Now, I have heard other people extol the wonders of the Whole Foods hot bar.  So I really became curious: who makes the prepared food at the Whole Foods?  Is it basically all the same, store to store, or is my store just the idiot brother to what is mostly a fraternity of excellent chefs?

What Whole Foods says: "All of our prepared foods are created by trained Team Members under the supervision of an experienced chef, or two, or three, depending on how big the store is and how many dining areas it has."  Vague.  Also vague: "Our chefs prepare your delicious salads, soups and sandwiches from scratch every day."

The Washington Post alludes vaguely to third-parties who are involved. "Wegmans and Whole Foods Market are among the leaders in prepared foods: They hire chefs and prep teams for their stores and occasionally contract with third-party vendors to fill their massive collective of steam tables; together, the in-house and outside crews prepare dozens of dishes daily, breakfast through dinner."  This story includes a table which actually contains a few details about my local store: "Most [dishes on the hot bar] produced in-house.  The Greek, Cuban and South African dishes are made by local, third-party vendors."  They make the same comments about a different area Whole Foods, so we can perhaps assume this is the usual scenario, at least regionally.

The Whole Foods response to this post is quite similar, reiterating the mostly made in the store, some things made by a local vendor meeting our standards line.  However, rumors (true or not) fly around too, such as "Almost all of the prepared foods come from Sysco, not the sales floor. The only time you'll be eating anything even remotely similar to organic romaine in your $9 caesar salad, is if they had bunch of it on spoil in the produce department."  (I will clarify that I believe this commenter means the ingredients come from Sysco, not the prepared foods themselves.  Also, the fact that unsellable food is repurposed in-house for prepared food items is, to me, good news, not a scandal.  This is certainly what took place when I used to work in a natural foods co-op deli.)

I'm wondering if the only way to know the truth for sure is to ask my local employees rather than some PR guy.  So, the next time I go to the Whole Foods deli counter, I ask the young man who's waiting on me: "Does all this stuff get made right here in the store?  Or... is there, like, a central kitchen where they make some of it?"  He enthusiastically describes how people come in early in the morning to start cooking and prepping.  "They make the breakfast, they make the lunches... they make all this... the meats... right back there in that kitchen!  but..."--he gestures towards the prepackaged, plastic-wrapped Applegate hams and turkey breasts-- "those, those come from New Jersey, we don't make those here."  Well, obviously.  If he has to point out to me that Applegate Farms products (now owned by Hormel, I just discovered) are not made in-house, then I believe him that most of the rest really is prepared by his coworkers.  He sounded, in fact, rather proud.  

​So why does so much of the food suck?
I don't know.
3 Comments
Jane
5/16/2017 07:23:34 pm

I work for Whole Foods Market and I can attest that most of the hotbar/ prepared food items are made in house. At our store however the tuna salads, chicken salad, egg salad and a couple of pasta salads come in tubs from our local commissary. I agree that the food is very underseasoned but there is a reason. They keep things neutral to cater to everyone. I suggest adding a dash of salt/pepper to your prepared food item, it makes a world of difference in flavor!

Reply
Aberdeen
1/31/2020 03:52:56 pm

I work for Whole Foods. We make most of the things that you see in a hot bar and prepared foods. If you really don’t know how and where things are prepared, do not go writing posts like these.

Reply
Joseph
1/31/2020 06:15:33 pm

I work at whole foods in Colorado, and I work the hot bar daily. I can say that most of the food I cook(reheat), is from a bag. If, the production team made it, then they got their ingredients from a bag as well. Turkey meatloaf for example, comes from a plastic tube. Most of their food seems to be made in a whole foods factory in Texas. I was shocked to see this when I first started, as it went agains't what I thought they stood for. They do care deeply, and they do use top notch ingredients. However, when it comes to prepared foods, it seems that is not the same. I have heard a chef saying he has to lie about an item they make, to say they make in house. So between the B-rate chefs and the brainwashed managers, whole foods has become what they fought. Who knew it would be from selling prepared food.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Whodunit

    The author is a waitress, home cook, and foodie who has trouble sticking to a subject.  She currently resides and works in the Maryland suburbs of D.C..

    Archives

    June 2018
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    July 2014
    June 2014

    Categories

    All
    Bon Appetit
    Food Diary
    Guts
    Jennifer Reese
    Kitchen Practices
    Madhur Jaffrey
    Miscellany
    Mridula Baljekar
    Nonpienary
    Pie Of The Month
    Politics
    Rants
    Recipes
    Recommended Reading
    Restaurant Reviews
    Smitten Kitchen
    The Cat
    Things That Have Nothing To Do With Food



    Other people who eat, walk, and/or have to live in this effin' country:
    The Tipsy Baker
    Smitten Kitchen
    ​Orangette
    ​Cooking Without a Net
    ​My Name is Yeh
    ​
    A Sweet Spoonful
    ​
    Jack Monroe
    Lottie + Doof
    Two Red Bowls
    ​VSB




Proudly powered by Weebly
Photos used under Creative Commons from 4MamaMagazine, jdavis, Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com, Andy Hay, Andy Hay, Jerk Alert Productions, machaq, vere+photo, AlishaV, oonhs, wuestenigel, NIHClinicalCenter, JeepersMedia, Ly Thien Hoang (Lee), James St. John, N@ncyN@nce, fourpointgo, WeTravel.com, vagueonthehow, paraflyer, Tac6 Media, my little red suitcase, BarnImages.com, Kirinohana, Tony Webster, Lorie Shaull, roger4336, jules:stonesoup, torbakhopper, 2KoP, Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com, entouriste, Laura Northrup, Sam Howzit, toniv90, espinr, leostrakosch, ell brown, Calgary Reviews, entouriste, Hey Paul Studios, Nrbelex, Gerry Dincher, kelvinf19, Natalia Volna itravelNZ@ travel app, perpetualplum, NCinDC, AlishaV, m01229, LifeSupercharger, NathanReed, madelinewright, mikecogh, regan76, JeepersMedia, Steiner Studios, spratt504, Matthew Paul Argall, melanie.lebel94, stu_spivack, Calgary Reviews, Kristoffer Trolle, Tambako the Jaguar, Mr.Sai, JeepersMedia, emleung, televisione, Ruth and Dave, Upupa4me, b-j-oe-r-n, Franco Folini, Green Mountain Girls Farm, Roberto Verzo, MAURO CATEB, pacomexico, takomabibelot