Dropped into Ralphs for the first time in like a year, to see how far they’d come to embrace fair trade stuff and organic wines. I spent about an hour scouring the shelves — Damn, these Ralphs are huge! — to find 2 fair trade items:
1. Honest Tea. Their bagged teas, not the bottled ones — though it’s possible I just missed them among the hundreds of bottles there. I’m not really a tea drinker, but they sound like a nice, honest company. Perhaps Will Pillage for Yarn can give us a review? If you’re a fan, vote for them for the Co-op America People’s Choice Award.
2. Seattle’s Best Fair-Trade Certified Organic French Roast. And see the nice things this Starbucks-owned coffee line has to say about fair trade on its website: “Fair Trade doesn’t provide aid or charity, but instead promotes self-reliance and equality for farmers who are disadvantaged under present trading conditions.” True. Very true.. Would love SB even more if they offered more than one blend, but am glad they’re at least representin’ fair trade at a big bad red chain like Ralphs.
Couldn’t find any organic wines, though I did see some wines from Fetzer — a winery I heartily support because its goal’s to go 100% organic by 2010.
So I bought a couple Fetzers, after jetting over to Trader Joe’s. They’re a couple bucks cheaper there than at Ralphs.
Very much depends on the Ralphs; they are taylored a bit for specific neighborhoods. The corporate web page indicates that they tend to pull business from homes about 2.5 miles distant, so they can, and do, cater to neighborhoods.
For example, the Ralphs in east Pasadena, across the street from the Whole Foods Market, and a Trader Joe’s, has a LOT of Fair Trade / Organic stuff, and special Green shelf-tags.
Even the Trader Joe’s in east Pas seems to be influenced; we just shopped tonight for a family of five, and without difficulty had one or more organic choices in almost every product we bought — and many we didn’t! Seems like (although I haven’t checked) that this TJ’s has more organic stuff than its sister store on S. Lake in Pasadena.
Roger
P.S. Keeping meaning to test my Starbucks for you . . . waiting with baited breath to hear what they say.
I have been pestering them to stock local papers in their stores. Pasadena Star-News, Daily News, etc. depending. They keep saying they do stock a local paper: The LA Times (sheesh). (grin).
Comment by Roger, Gone Green — October 7, 2005 @ 7:50 pm
Hey Roger — Welcome to the blogosphere :) Really interesting about the variations in Ralphs! Very different from Starbucks, which seems to be trying to make all Starbucks as similar as possible.
In any case, it’s great to see what consumer demand can do, even to big chain corporations. I’ll definitely have to check another one out — I went to the one in Culver City.
Comment by Siel — October 8, 2005 @ 11:01 am
Hey you, which Ralphs in Culver City did you visit? There are two? I’ll hit the other one if ya like :-) cos I live there.
Honest Tea - well, honestly, it’s not bad. Their tea does not suck. This is high praise, coming from the Yarnpriate. I don’t tend to drink bagged tea as a rule because generally bagged tea blows ropy goat chunks, but really, this tea does NOT blow ropy goat chunks. For teabags, it’s actually pretty good. If you drink one of their Assams, it tastes like Assam is supposed to taste with all the characteristics I’d expect from a tea originating from that region. Their blends are good representations of what those blends should taste like (the chai is actually pretty damn good) and if in the market, desperately needing tea with no quality loose leaf in sight, I’d totally buy it. I have willingly purchased this tea to take camping.
Their bottled offerings are a FAR sight better than Tejava, Tazo, Snapple and Lipton. Seeing them in the grocer’s case always makes me go ‘Ooooh!’ on a hot day and buy one. I like the Honest Assam. Straight up, great stuff.
Comment by Will Pillage For Yarn — October 8, 2005 @ 3:54 pm
Haha — Funny that “does not suck” is high praise — I’ll have to buy some Assam the next time. I went to the Ralphs at that complex on Venice and Sepulveda, with the Ballys and the RiteAid and the [insert long list of corporate chains here]. Where’s the other one?
Comment by Siel — October 10, 2005 @ 5:39 pm