A Well-Buttered, Slippery Slope

Last weekend I made my weekly trip to the local natural foods store to pick up a few items.  I have a few favorites that are on my list whenever I visit them; their oranges are wonderful, they stock a brand of vanilla extract I particularly like, they have some awesome home-grown veggies, and I will usually stroll around and see if anything else catches my eye.

This week, I remembered I needed some organic butter while I was there, so I popped some into my basket before heading to the counter.  The gal rang up $6.99 for the butter, but then paused and said, "Wait.  That can't be right."  She went into the back room and sure enough, had found there was a mistake.  The butter I'd picked, it turns out, was $9.98...almost $10 -- for four sticks of butter.  Nothing special, nothing fancy, just four sticks of organic unsalted butter, made by a national manufacturer.

I told her I was sorry, but I wasn't going to buy it at that price, and put it back in the freezer case.  She gave me a look that was either pitying or withering; I'm not sure which.

The next week, at Von's, I also found organic, unsalted butter....four sticks for $5.49.  And I won't lie, I snatched it up and took it home.  And I'm a little bit perplexed and disturbed that my local natural foods store would place such an outrageous price tag on a product considered a staple, when its actual price is so much lower.

When I looked on the internet, for example, I could have had a case of this same health-food store butter delivered to my house for what would work out to about $5.80 a box (we have a chest freezer, so this would actually be pretty do-able).  So I assume the little natural foods store could do the same and maybe a $6.99 price tag would allow them a decent profit.  But I think the $10 price tag comes based on the fact that most of their patrons are well-heeled enough to pay that much for it, and snooty enough to not want to be seen as questioning the price (as if they couldn't pay for it).

Sometimes I think the worst thing that's ever happened to the "shop local" movement is when it became a status symbol of the well-to-do -- the people who never need to ask "how much is this?" before buying something.

I always think of the local foods movement as being run by a group of people who have each others' best interests at heart, and for the most part, it is.  But there are still some who will charge whatever the traffic will bear, and will prey on a population that's too lazy to do their homework regarding the actual cost of something, factoring in a reasonable mark-up in order to stay in business.  

I have no objection to somebody making a profit.  But a 50% markup on something is going above and beyond the need to make a profit on the items you stock.  It's price gouging, and it's no less offensive in the natural foods marketplace than at the supermarket.  Maybe it's more, because the local foods movement is all about having a sense of community and a "we're all in this together" mentality.

It's not just here on the Central Coast where things like this happen.  I have friends back east who regularly find the produce at their local farmer's market has been bought at the local supermarket and re-sold as organic, with the price suitably marked-up.  Some farmer's markets police their vendors better than others.

But I have to say, it's disappointing to find those wolves among the sheep.  And my only hope is that, when it comes to asking for reasonable prices, we don't throw common sense out the window just because someone is local and looks like The Little Guy to us.

Little Guys are sometimes crooks, too, just like their big counterparts.