Whole Foods Marketplace Observation Paper

When considering this section, otherwise known as Unit 3, I kept in mind various locations I have visited while driving for Favor in the Downtown area. Options varied from expensive restaurants to simple burger joints, or classy high-end bars compared to those on Dirty 6th, the options where endless. Although the thought of documenting the behavior of a drunken adult and a club bouncer on Dirty 6th did seem interesting, I decided to take my research to a more civil side of 6th St. and stationed at Whole Foods Market.

While thinking about past visits to Whole Foods, I recalled that this location becomes busy at certain times of the day, which is why I decided to divide my hourly visit into two parts of that day. My first research half hour was at approximately 2PM on Nov. 14th, a Monday afternoon and the second was at approximately 7PM the same afternoon. During the time of my study, I walked to various parts of the grocery store and payed close attention to interactions between workers and customers. What I noticed is that workers in areas located further back in the store did not interact with customers as kindly or

During both study times, I noticed that the majority or customers where high-class men and women. While thinking about why this was the case, location became an important factor. Whole Foods is located on Lamar and 6th which is no more than 10 minutes from the West side of Austin, or in other words, the “wealthy side”. Compared to the HEB on Congress or Riverside, Whole Foods is a luxurious location, which is much cleaner and shows no signs of any type of poverty, which makes certain people feel safer. Locations where the majority of people are rich treat their customers better and work harder to keep those customers. This is why people not only come here for their groceries, but for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, simply because they love the environment that owners work hard to