Whole Foods Market - leading bike exampleWhole Foods Market - leading bike example

Natural & organic used to dictate where green-minded consumers shopped but as mass brings healthier food out of the hippie ghetto in the back of the store to take over more and more square footage, the advantage of the health-branded grocer gets smaller and smaller.

Could the next differentiator be the green infrastructure of the store itself? Not just where the dairy case is but how it’s refrigerated?

But wait. There’s more!

The cargo bikes have solar panels!

In a world where people burn fossil fuels to “eat local,” few things have more potential for helping the planet than bicycles. From greenhouse gases to neighborhood quality of life, bikes are a positive force. Whole Foods, and their two-wheeled partners People’s Cargo, offer a high-profile example of what can be done with two wheels.

Whether or not the bikes or the impressive accumulation of green achievements at the Brooklyn market gains them new shoppers, they have gained our respect. Whole Foods is leading on GMO transparency and now, at least in Brooklyn, they are leading on green infrastructure. Both of these are “Whole Foods Effect” trends we’d like to see spread across the grocery industry. What we’d really like to see is the consumers step up to lead the trend, voting with their shopping carts, and putting the reusable grocery bags in their bike baskets for the ride home.