Keeping a Cap on Cost

Cha-ching. It all adds up, all this good, organic, local food. I think I'm going to save a fortune, and in some ways I do, but the sheer abundance of food I buy means a big, fat grocery bill, no matter how I slice it. At first, I thought Whole Foods was just plain expensive, but I've trained myself over the years to buy their house brand when possible, choose produce on sale with prices that I know are good comparatively, and skip the things I know I can get less expensively elsewhere (like conventional pineapples, and basil from my garden only in season, and cookies I can bake myself). Yet the magnitude of items that fit my parameters in that particular store means my grocery cart is always overflowing, and so I limit how often I allow myself to go there.

As for Kroger and Publix, it's a quick run around the perimeter of the store, buying milk, organic waffles, yogurt and whatever meager organic fruit offerings they have. Yet the bill still explodes. Costco is carrying more and more organic offerings, and yes, I know, they are probably from somewhere far, far away. Yet I buy what I can't find locally--organic fair trade coffee, organic peanut butter (in a state that is the #1 producer of peanuts in the country, no less), that trail mix with the dark chocolate chips in it that I pick out obsessively.

The farmers market helps, yet now as my farmers market is growing, so is my bill, and with it being heirloom tomato season, I'm pretty much doomed. The CSA helps a great deal, but since I never know what I'm going to get, and I have a family to feed, I can't rely on that as my only source of produce.

And so, I greatly appreciated when my farmer friend, Melissa, introduced me to the Natural Foods Warehouse recently, which is just nine miles from my home (and there is a second location not far away as well). Owned by the folks who own a natural foods store (Return to Eden) here in Atlanta, this 10,000-square-foot warehouse offers natural and organic packaged goods, supplements and personal care products, with a scattering of dairy and frozen foods and a large wine section, for wholesale prices. Items change monthly and are chosen from the top 2000 items sold in the natural foods marketplace. The Natural Foods Warehouse is significantly, sometimes shockingly, less expensive for things I buy regularly at the other places. I even found local, raw honey there, although that seemed to be about it for local.

So I continue to cobble together a sort of time-consuming quest for just the right mix of products to feed a family and fulfill a soul. I'm not there yet. But places like the Natural Foods Warehouse give me hope. Because as I continue to vote with my dollars for good food, my options keep expanding.

Click here to find out more about the Natural Foods Warehouse. And let us know what solutions you've found to keeping a cap on cost when feeding your family organically.

Keeping a Cap on Cost