Putting a Whole Foods in Englewood is fraught for the same reason it would be in Humboldt Park (well, minus the gentrification issue).
Go to Jimenez or Del Rancho and check out the produce section: it's comparable in size to a Whole Foods, but stocked very differently. You can find a small tub of lemongrass or buddhas hand citrus at Whole Foods, along with a small tub of jalapenos and maybe a plaintain. You can't find buddhas hand at Jimenez at all, but fresh peppers are stacked floor to ceiling.
Produce variety at Jimenez is poorer than Whole Foods. But quantity is much greater, and quality is higher. Jimenez does a better job at stocking the ingredients people in their neighborhood actually use.
Similarly: you can get cheap-cheap-cheap top round or ground pork or skirt or chorizo at Del Rancho. You can't get hanger steak, air-chilled cage-free chicken, or 15 varieties of chicken-apple sausage.
Having a serious grocery store in Englewood is an unalloyed good thing, no matter whether they choose to stock Organic Valley Sour Cream or Salvadoran crema (the crema is better, by the way). But if Whole Foods really wants to help the south side, they're going to have run a different kind of Whole Foods. It would be really neat to see them try.
Go to Jimenez or Del Rancho and check out the produce section: it's comparable in size to a Whole Foods, but stocked very differently. You can find a small tub of lemongrass or buddhas hand citrus at Whole Foods, along with a small tub of jalapenos and maybe a plaintain. You can't find buddhas hand at Jimenez at all, but fresh peppers are stacked floor to ceiling.
Produce variety at Jimenez is poorer than Whole Foods. But quantity is much greater, and quality is higher. Jimenez does a better job at stocking the ingredients people in their neighborhood actually use.
Similarly: you can get cheap-cheap-cheap top round or ground pork or skirt or chorizo at Del Rancho. You can't get hanger steak, air-chilled cage-free chicken, or 15 varieties of chicken-apple sausage.
Having a serious grocery store in Englewood is an unalloyed good thing, no matter whether they choose to stock Organic Valley Sour Cream or Salvadoran crema (the crema is better, by the way). But if Whole Foods really wants to help the south side, they're going to have run a different kind of Whole Foods. It would be really neat to see them try.