Whole Foods, white liberalism and short-term solutions to long term problems

"You got our TIF money and now you're leaving with our TIF money," Taylor said. "These companies don't care about us."

Pedro Bortoto, a labor researcher and Doctor of Labor History from Brazil's University of Campinas who has lived in Chicago for several years, was also unsurprised at the news. Englewood, he pointed out, has seen seen extensive divestment from both the private and public sectors since the 1960s, when the South Side neighborhood's white residents fled in droves to the suburbs. According to a 1999 history of the neighborhood in The Chicago Reporter, the white population of Englewood "plummeted from 51,583 to 818" between 1960 and 1980, and it has remained a majority-Black community ever since.

Poverty is structural and endemic in such communities affected by white flight, Bortoto said, and their residents' food insecurity cannot be solved by a real estate deal for a shopping center. While DL3 Realty has Black owners, he labelled the decision to open a high-price grocery store in a poverty-stricken area "white liberal thinking."

"It's a short term solution to a long term problem," Bortoto said. "It's white liberal thinking. It's, 'we want to the neighborhood to have good food. Where do they have good food? Oh, Whole Foods.' Never mind how expensive it is."

Bortoto further pointed out that Whole Foods began reporting declining profits to the Security and Exchange Commission in 2015. He opined that opening the store in Englewood with a multi-million dollar subsidy may have been an attempt to tap into new markets - one that didn't pan out.

"The tendency of the profits to fall that occurred then, is probably occurring now," he said.

The company itself isn't saying. Responding to requests for comment on the situation, a Whole Foods representative gave only this prepared statement:

“As we continue to position Whole Foods Market for long-term success, we regularly evaluate the performance and growth potential of each of our stores, and we have made the difficult decision to close six stores."

The Whole Foods workers in Englewood also declined to comment, with several saying they'd been instructed by management not to speak to reporters.

Joseph Choonara, a lecturer in political economy at the UK's University of Leicester, placed the blame for the store's closure not so much on Whole Foods itself but on Amazon, which acquired Whole Foods in 2017. He dismissed Robb's remarks to WBEZ as sentimentality obfuscating the company's hard economic calculus.

"I think this is just a cold calculation by Amazon that they don't want to subsidize this store," Choonara said.

He added that while the $438 billion+ company reaped massive profits through 2020, those pandemic profits have begun to decrease. Amazon has reported a $7.6 billion net loss since the start of 2022.

"[Amazon] hugely increased their logistics, their staffing levels through the pandemic, but... they're now reaching a point where that pandemic boost is wearing off," he said. "They're now seeing a squeeze on profit. People are not spending as much on Amazon as they were a few months ago."

Taylor said that, regardless of where blame should fall, she hoped the closure would serve as a message to City Hall and Chicagoans at large that divested communities can not rely on big box stores' magnanimity. She advocated for stricter legislation preventing large companies from picking up sticks without reimbursing the city for its investments, and said what her community needed was more local grocers with personal ties to the area.

"There's been talk about growing our own grocers, so we're not dealing with big boxes," Taylor said. "How many Black and brown grocers are there in this city? Not many."

Expanding the scope of the analysis, Choonara and Bortoto both said that they believed closures like this augured further instability in the global economy. Choonara even predicted a global recession, as large companies try to squeeze ever slimming-profits out of consumers whose wages are stagnant and whose costs of living are only going up — a scenario Bortoto called "stagflation."

"I think a lot of these firms will look at their holdings and think, what works, what isn't such a good investment... I think we should expect that kind of instability," Choonara said.

That instability will hit wage workers like those at Whole Foods the hardest, Choonara said, and so those workers should be prepared to fight for fair treatment. Whole Foods said in its statement that it will offer "interested, eligible" employees of the Lincoln Park and Englewood stores positions at its other locations, and severance to those who are let go. It did not respond to requests to clarify how much or in what form this severance will take. It also did not specify how it would determine who among its Englewood and Lincoln Park employees were "eligible" for a position at another store.

"The best thing to do now is organize and demand what [Whole Foods] promised. They're promising severances? Then make a stink about it," Bortoto said.

This drama surrounding the closures comes with one final twist. Last Wednesday — two days before Whole Foods announced it was closing the Englewood and Lincoln Park stores — the company opened a new location in River North, one of Chicago's wealthiest neighborhoods.

"The store’s design is inspired by the historic homes, storefronts and gourmet restaurants of the surrounding neighborhoods with elements like elegant arches, recycled handmade tiles and glazed brick," a news release on the location's opening said.

Alderwoman Taylor was not impressed.

"Thank you for turning your back on our community," she said, when asked if there was anything she'd like to say to Whole Foods and Amazon's corporate leadership. "Thank you for showing your true colors. Sincerely, a Black mother who just wants what everybody else has."

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