Purity Of Food And Truth In Advertising

The Park Slope Food Co-op is an often-crowded place with a weird floor plan that makes for difficult maneuvering, even when it’s empty. And yet, it’s my favorite place to shop. It’s my favorite place to spend money in New York. And never have I walked away feeling like I’d spent too much, or been treated unfairly, which is more than I can say for just about any other entity that I have ever done business with.

I took this photo today while shopping at the co-op. From a business/marketing perspective, it’s fascinating what’s going on here. The co-op has:

• made a decision to stock a certain product.
• put the product in a display case with the label showing the product’s value proposition prominently displayed.
• decided that they are going to disagree with the label, and warn customers that the value proposition is a lie and that the label is misleading.
• decided that they’re going to continue to carry the product anyway.

Have you ever seen something like this happen in a for-profit business? They’re much less likely to embrace the conflicting messages. It’s hard enough to get someone to spend money. Telling customers at the point of decision that they might want to reconsider is a tactic that’s going to seem counter-intuitive to most business. That’s especially true of small businesses, the proprietors of which tend to eschew irony and nuance in the way they present products and services to customers. (Exceptions: when the business is really marketing itself as a bastion of counterculture, such as an indie coffee shop, bookstore, music store, or video store.)

The deeper message being sent here, from co-op to customer, is this: We’re more interested in helping you make the right decision than we are in taking your money.

Such a counterintuitive message must be put into practice to be believed. And, since all businesses want to make money, the underlying logic must go something like this: We believe that being honest with our customers will translate into enough loyalty that we will make a profit. Or rather:

(revenue earned on purchase of commodities from customers who decided to buy from us because they trust us)

minus

(revenue lost from purchases that customers decided not to make based on our honesty)

equals

(acceptable net revenue)

This calculation is hard to do on a balance sheet. You can keep track of purchases, and sometimes you can even keep track of near-purchases, but it’s much harder to keep track of motivations. Ultimately, it comes down to how much you stock you put in:

• your own instincts
• human nature
• the truth

Note: Wikipedia calls spelt “a wheat species,” but also distinguishes it from “common wheat.” The FDA agrees that spelt is wheat, and that it must be labeled as such, meaning that the sign I saw at the co-op may actually be necessary to bring the producer (and the co-op itself) into compliance with the law. Others argue that this is an oversimplification that is made simply because spelt contains gluten.

image by miconian, taken with my iPhone classic