Whole Foods

I was so disappointed

19 Apr 08, 11:18 Well below expectations

I had really high hopes for whole foods, and was sorely disappointed when I did finally make my way up there.

All the organic items are not unique or interesting - you can get most of this stuff in your local supermarket at half the price.

The cheese room was fetid with cheese that had gone over, the fruit and veg looked sad and tired.

I think it's a waste of money, bring back Barkers anytime!

Perfect positioning

13 Feb 08, 11:07 Above expectations

There’ve been lots of comments about how expensive Wholefood is. If you plan on doing your weekly shop there it’s probably a fair comment however you have to put this in context… It’s on Kensington High St. so it’s fair to say that most people who use this as their ‘local’ supermarket don’t spend much time looking at price labels! What it’s perfect for is he odd treat or more obscure ingredient. The range of stock is mind blowing, over 25 different peanut butters!! And yes none of them were cheep but equally there were very few of them that you could buy elsewhere. In summary, not a great store for your weekly shop but perfect for a few extras.

Why ???

23 Oct 07, 15:41 Below expectations

Glorified Supermarket on Kensington High Street

It kinda looks nice, and the idea is pretty cool. But everything seemed so expensive.

Arranged over three floors, you have ground floor cheese, bread, wine, eggs cold produce. Hot food & salad bar and more Basement had fruit, veg, meats, grocers, household prod. bathroom / pharmacy prod. some clothes. First floor eating area and specialist counters selling takeaway or eat-in food.

You have the option of doing your regular shop, check out and go home. Or you can buy your lunch / dinner and go upstairs and eat. Plenty of variety, pizza, sushi, burritos, flaffels, seafood bar, italian ice cream, pastrys, salad bar and a hot food bar that has curries, rice, roast potatoes, other veg, meat balls etc Great to get that nice treat for lunch and take over the road for a picnic in the park.

The hot food looked like it had sat there sometime, not so appeitising. Although it was late afternoon, so perhaps you have to get in earlier for the fresh batch. It was busy, plenty of tourists - guess thats also down to location.

I quite enjoyed browsing and looking at all the yummy foods, packaging and displays. The cheese section is great and nice samples.

I'd wouldn't shop here regularly, and would never do a weekly shop here !

Ho Hum

18 Oct 07, 21:27 As expected

I'm really shocked to hear what Mark P had to say about the place with regard to how long their fish hangs around for, but having never bought fish from them, I can't really comment.

Sticking to my own experience, I think it's pretty much everything I expected it to be. It is HUGELY expensive on the whole and despite the fact that they talk a lot about organic, not everything in the store is organic.

But in terms of price, bear in mind that they're on a piece of prime real estate, slap bang in the middle of Kensington, which is one of the highest income areas in the country. And it seems that's who they're catering for.

Their salad bar is great if you want a quick lunch but as Nat R says, prices can quickly escalate if you're not careful. I also quite like their sushi rolls - they're fresher than any other supermarket sushi I've ever had and reasonably priced as well - around a fiver for 9 chunky little spicy salmon or tuna rolls.

Cheese devotees will love the cheese room and if you want to go to town on a cheese board, and are prepared to spend a decent amount of money, you'll get some seriously good bang for your buck.

Fruit and veg downstairs are beautifully displayed and regularly spritzed in a very American fashion, but again, buying a bunch of grapes ain't going to leave you much change from a fiver.

With this place, it's not that you get what you pay for, but that you get what Kensington locals are prepared to pay for.

Former employee

07 Sep 07, 17:09 Well below expectations

I use to work for whole foods all be it 6 weeks was shocked to discover that in those 6 weeks no ticketin or dating system was used on the fish counter when your next at the fish case ask to see the back of the tickets....Unlike everyother store in UK there will be no date telling the employee when that product was opened or when its to be sold by,Thank god Waitrose follow the law,when will wholefoods get punished for selling old out of date stock as fresh...

Nothing great

07 Aug 07, 16:40 As expected

The hype of this place has meant that it hasn't quite lived up to expectations. Yes, it's big. Yes, it has an awfully large selection of produce, but it's just too busy, queuing up to pay takes too long and it feels too "posh". That said, it's actually not as expensive as many people make out, assuming you're not after a specific type of olive only found one mountain in northern Greece. It's nicely laid out, the staff are very helpful and the baskets are pleasingly spacious. The thing is, we're actually quite spoiled in the UK, and London specifically, by the likes of M&S food, Waitrose, Sainsburys and likes of Borough Market, etc. It will succeed eventually, but just not as quickly as everyone assumed!

Being ethical can mean paying a lot and eating bad sausages

25 Jun 07, 21:24 Below expectations

I was very impressed when I first walked in - there are escalators for trolleys, and jets of water squirting periodically over the fresh produce to keep conditions right. But look again and you'll see the range of fresh goods is actually quite limited - I couldn't find a pot of cress, for example.

Some options are deceptively pricey: used to Morrisons' salad bar (sold by pot size), I stuffed a large salad pot full of cold cooked veg. Unfortunately it was sold by weight and came to £11! (No, I couldn't believe it either.) The pork and leek sausages were also over-priced, but while the salad was quite nice, these were lumpy, chewy and generated instant belly ache.

I dislike the mainstream supermarkets as much as the next hippy. But if you want to support local, ethically-produced food, and to actually enjoy eating it, go to a farmer's market or join a box scheme instead.

Expensive and bad tasting

25 Jun 07, 14:08 Well below expectations

After getting slightly stuck in Kensington yesterday and not being able to get home in time to do the weekly shop, I decided to check out Whole Foods, the brand new organic supermarket that's got tree-huggers and eco-warriors into a tizzy.

The first thing you notice when you walk in is how American the store seems. Most supermarkets manage to retain some Britishness about them, despite being foreignly-operated, but Whole Food seems like it's been transported directly from the middle of America. You'd be excused for thinking that the prices were in dollars too, but unfortunately they're in good old pounds sterling, which makes Whole Food verging on the ridiculously expensive.

An example of this is a loaf of organic bread for £1.99, or a pack of sausages for over 3 quid. Now, you'd be let off buying this if it was of the highest quality, but eating the bread was like eating cardboard. It wouldn't toast either, and tasted horrible. I seriously have had Tesco's cheapest value bread that's been better. The sausages were also foul too and had all the texture of thick rice pudding. These products were Whole Foods branded too, so you think that they'd want to be representative of the company.

I did however buy some vegetables to go with my sausages which were actually delicious. There were as good as any veg box scheme you can get, although at an heavily inflated price.

I know people might say that this place has better food, but I think that if you want tastier food, you would be far better off (in the monetary sense as well) going for a normal supermarkets organic range. Whole Foods will be popular over here as it has been in America, but it really needs to look at it's quality control and try not to sell food that just doesn't taste nice.

Horrible Whole Foods

25 Jun 07, 09:48 Well below expectations

I visited Whole Foods on saturday and it was a completely vile experience. The place is a mad house. There is now queing system - you just have to scrum it out to order and by the time they actually serve you the food is cold and congealed.

It is also terribly expensive. I paid £4.50 for an inedible waffle. The place is noisy and messy and it is best avoided.

Whole Foods, dialed up to 11

21 Jun 07, 10:16 Above expectations

After much anticipation, this first overseas flagship of the US-based upmarket eco-grocer has opened for business. But instead of offering Londoners a carbon copy of an American store, those responsible for this emporium seem to have done their homework on this side of the pond. It's clear that they'd like to take a chunk out of the business at M&S and Waitrose. But it also looks like they've studied -- and emulated -- such London institutions as Harrods, Selfridges & Harvey Nichols Food Halls, the Fromagerie in Marylebone, Fortnum & Mason, and even a few bits of Borough Market. If there is one slight disappointment, it is the size and selection of fresh produce. Otherwise, this is a complete market with every imaginable convenience (for example, alongside baking ingredients are rolling pins and cookie cutters). The butcher, fishmonger and prepared foods sections are excellent. The encyclopaedic wine selection includes what might be Europe's greatest variety of American product. The cheese department includes an affinage room (for aging fine cheeses). There are wine, oyster, tapas, and dim sum bars, artisinal gelato, and other restaurant-style offerings upstairs, where the soundtrack is provided by an in-house DJ. Downstairs, in addition to food, there are a variety of dry goods: organic cotton clothing and accessories, health & beauty products, cosmetics, kitchen gadgets, and more. It will probably undergo a few adjustments as it settles into its expat life, but this store should be a huge success.