The natural foods shopper was thought to be obsessed with notions of purity: vine-ripened tomatoes and chickens that were allowed to run around the free range. The mainstream shopper was believed to ignore ingredients, to value price above all else, and to laugh out loud each time Euell Gibbons popped up on TV talking about how Grape-Nuts was his “back to nature cereal.” The schism was in full view when, after natural foods upstart Fresh Fields had begun to make a splash with its Washington-area supermarkets in the early 1990s, mainstream grocer Giant Food, with an incredible 45.8% market share in DC and Baltimore, took up the topic of Fresh Fields at a board meeting. “Should we crush them?” asked Izzy Cohen, the chairman. No, it was decided, they posed no threat. And Fresh Fields was allowed to live. MORE: What “Natural” Really Means Today, the differences between mainstream supermarkets and some natural markets are about as clear as a bottle of aloe juice, with pulp. Natural and organic foods are ubiquitous, just as likely to be found in a Piggly Wiggly as in a neighborhood health foods store. Indeed, a recent study by Natural Foods Merchandiser magazine revealed that while 41% of all natural foods are still being sold through natural foods retailers, 40% are being sold through conventional retailers. You don’t have to look any further than Kroger, the nation’s largest traditional supermarket company, to sense the seismic shifts. Last December, president Rodney McMullen, said that natural foods were only the 6th or 7th largest department in the company, but were 1st in percentage growth, and sometimes 1st in dollar growth. In July of this year, Kroger forked out $280 million to buy online vitamin retailer Vitacost. And within the past few weeks, Kroger’s Simple Truth natural and organic line, which was created less than two years ago, passed $1 billion in sales. (There is, by the way, a Simple Truth free-range chicken.) If you really want to know where all the growth in healthy eating is coming from, as the $110 billion industry is poised to double by the end of the decade, don’t look to Whole Foods, with its 400 stores, or Sprouts, with its 200 stores, or even the other 12,000 natural foods stores in the US. Just drive right down the street to your regular old supermarket.
