For those of you who don’t already know, Whole Foods is a specialty grocery shop, on their website, they describe themselves as;

“We search for the highest quality, least processed, most flavorful and natural foods possible because we believe that food in its purest state — unadulterated by artificial additives, sweeteners, colorings and preservatives — is the best tasting and most nutritious food there is.”

Everything in there is organic, fresh, and yummy.  I don’t go in here overly often because, for the most part, it’s more expensive than shopping in H.E.B, Target or somewhere like that.  You pay a premium for super fresh, organic etc.

There are things I DO, however, shop in Whole Foods for, without fail!

Sausages

Whole Foods have the ‘closest to home’ kind of sausages we’ve found since moving out here.  Ok, they aren’t perfect, and if you showed them to Mr Denny himself, he’d laugh at you, but, in a pinch (and having not been home for a Denny’s sausage in two years,) they work a treat.

Soup

If I’m sick or fancy some soup (as I’ve only recently started making soup).  But they have fresh, hot soup there for the taking – it’s lovely!

Allergen baking goods

I’m attempting to bake some vegan friendly goodies for people in choir, and any bake sales that come up, Whole Foods is the place to go for all things allergen-friendly!

Lamb

Although Ireland is full of sheep, we never really ate a lot of lamb growing up, chicken was cheaper (and fish fingers were cheaper still!) but when we did, it was inhaled.  Moving out here, I grew to appreciate it all the more, lamb isn’t a widely consumed meat in the US.  In fact, it’s a pain in the bum to find, and, when you do, it’s seriously expensive.

I’ve also tried food from the hot/cold food counter and it’s also yum.  Their meat counter is fantastic, if we’re going to a BBQ or having a BBQ here in the house, we tend to pick our meat from here.  I can’t say I’ve ever had a bad experience with Whole Foods, until recently.

For those of you who read my blog regularly, you’ll know that I had a bit of a disaster with my lamb on St. Paddy’s weekend.  I spent over $40 in Whole Foods on a leg of lamb and a rather large percentage of it was pure, thick, disgusting fat.  I ended up having to supplement the meat with a joint of beef – to ensure our six friends didn’t starve! LOL!

At first, I tweeted them.  Twitter has become a place for me to both applaud businesses, and hurl abuse at them when they mess up.  However, after no reply, I filled in the ‘contact us’ section of their webpage, stating that forking out $40 for one piece of meat in a recession is a big deal to me, it was for a special occasion and it was a royal pain in the rear to have to saw off chunks and chunks of fat.

The manager of the store wrote me an email, apologising and said they wanted to give me a $40 gift card and a refund to apologise, to which I replied that I hadn’t kept the receipt (though I’d sent him a picture of the pile of fat and the W.F sticker from the packet) and he said that’s not a problem.

Today, I checked my post box and therein lay a gift card for more than the refund and the cost of the lamb combined from Whole Foods.  I’m shocked, that’s way beyond generous.  I would have been happy with ‘just’ a refund, the store manager did a great job at customer service and issue resolution and I’m feeling very pleased at the outcome of my contacting the company.

I’m not saying just complain left right and centre about anything and everything, I’m saying, if you have poor service, speak up about it.  If you get a poor quality product, say something about it.

I truly was disappointed by the quality of the lamb I got from Whole Foods that weekend, it wasn’t the standard of product I’m used to expecting from them, especially given the premium price tag on premium groceries.  However, the guy went out of his way to help me, and has given me a gift card that’ll get us a few legs of lamb to say sorry for it 😉 LOL!

Social media has become a very powerful tool, if someone Tweets about bad service, mentioning the company, word can spread like wild fire, and we all know that bad experiences are all anyone *really* cares about.

Are you a member of Yelp.com? It’s an online reviewing and rating website, kind of like Trip Advisor – just for the USA though, not international.  I tend to review restaurants, land marks, services, salons, etc every time I go to places.  Not for my own benefit, but for the benefit of other people around the Houston area (and other cities).

Here’s a picture of the receipt we left in our local Chili’s a while ago, I’m not kidding, I didn’t take it home with me, this was the restaurant copy…

The recession should not be an excuse for poor service, or falling standards.

Companies are still charging the same prices (in some circumstances, even moreso), so why should they be allowed to give us less service or quality for the price we’re paying? They shouldn’t.

I brought an issue to the attention of Whole Foods and they quickly apologised and righted the situation (and then some!) It’s taken every fibre of my being not to hop in the car and go to Whole Foods, my friend Frances talked about how she and Ben (her hubby) had lamb chops for dinner last week, and hearing about them made my mouth water…then I got home to a lovely Whole Foods gift card…I think someone’s trying to tell me, to go get some lamb! 😉