Some of you wrote in about Jon’s column on Whole Foods last month. Some of you liked it. Some of you didn’t. (I thought it was pretty good.) Then there’s the person on Facebook who thinks we shouldn’t post news items critical of Whole Foods’ business practices. Wait, what? That Co-op business practices and priorities are different from the big guys is sort of the Whole Point.

I have a history with Whole Foods. Who doesn’t? When Fresh Fields opened in Wynnewood in 1997, I thought I had died and gone to foodie heaven. And even after Whole Foods bought them, and the prepared foods weren’t as good and the employees didn’t seem as happy, for years it was still pretty much the only place I could be sure of finding fennel and caster sugar and organic chicken broth. Hey, I’ve spotted John Chaney and Ramona Africa in Whole Foods (no, not together). 

Then there’s Amazon. I shudder to think how many brick-and-mortar bookstores I personally put out of business. Nowadays, I try to avoid Amazon — that story a couple years back about how mean they are to their managers, and the one about the horrendous conditions at the Allentown picking plant kind of skeeved me out. But what with Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post and pressing needs for cat-urine UV flashlights and the like (don’t ask), Amazon is kind of unavoidable.

But now that Whole Foods is opening in Spring House, I feel like the time is right to share my Whole Peeve about the Whole Foods-Amazon fusion: 

They just want your data.

We want to sell healthy food, support the local economy, be good to the environment and promote the cooperative business model. They want your data. 

OK, sure, we have your data, too. But we aren’t on a crusade for Whole World Mercantile Domination. So come on in. Pay in unmarked cash, even. We like that.