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| - As a paleo eating customer, I have always preferred to shop at Natural Grocers. The vitamin cottage-holistic health area is well-stocked with natural herbs, salves, capsules and oils, for most health needs.
When I lived in Colorado, which is where the company headquarters are from, they were mostly good places to shop. People should also know that this grocery store is now a full corporate entity, just like Wal-Fart and Slaveway. It actually has shares traded on Wall Street with the 'ngvc' logo. The biggest shareholders still belong to the Colorado family that started the business.
Wary food consumers have to watch out at Natural Grocers stores nowadays. It all depends on the store. Some stores are quite good. They sell well-stocked, organic, non-rotten products and have friendly workers; while other stores are not far away from becoming grocery dumps, with a lack of workers, rotten grocery produce, high turnover, and expired food products still sitting on the shelf.
The Scottsdale, Arizona Natural Grocers is one of those dying stores, so health conscious and good eating customers need to be aware. They do give free coffee to their customers in their classroom facing the registers.
First, they sell expired products on the shelves, and often put them out in the front. I understand that a lot of expired products are still good to eat. But they are running a corporate grocery store, so there is no excuse for cheapness, which is what selling selling expired produce is all about. I actually bought an expired date pre-made humus, (i realized my mistake when bringing it home), and when I actually tried it, it was definitely rotten with that acidic-bitter taste. I had bad bowel movements for the next 24 hours. This can become serious if a child eats the rotten or expired foods.
Second, there is a clear lack of staff that work there, and most times that I have gone in to shop, I have noticed different and new workers each time. This obviously implies a high turnover of workers. A high turnover of workers, and just like in crap service industry jobs, means that the company now pays slave wages to its workers, which means they cannot live on those wage slave salaries. This is really bad, and this is especially horrendous in that we are talking about Scottsdale, Arizona, which has one of the higher rent/general living expenses in the country. Most of the workers that do stay for a few months tend to be pleasant - but not that friendly.
Third, their produce selection is not that good. It is a hit or miss with them. I have tasted delicious organic fruits, and other times, I have tasted fruits with mold on them, or they were still not ripe, or just over ripe with blackened spots inside. They get a lot of their produce from Mexico, which is especially not good. I lived in Mexico City for a year, and know for a fact, and from getting sick multiple times, that they still use feces and other animal excrements for fertilizers.
I visited Sprouts once and I found it a little bit too corporate, and if one can believe it, overly friendly, kind of like film flam sellers. But I will not risk my personal health for being a loyal customer. The Natural Grocers in Flagstaff seems to have a better set up, so I will still shop there. I will have to switch over to Sprouts in Scottsdale.
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