Here Is the Grocery Store Equivalent of the Wild West
The bulk foods aisle is self-governed and a little feral
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Not long after I moved to San Francisco, a foot fetishist tried to pick me up at Whole Foods. I was wearing sandals; he told me I had nice arches, and added that he could offer more than just compliments.
I was shocked but not surprised: not because this was San Francisco, but because we were in the bulk foods department. And as anyone who frequents the bulk aisle knows, it operates on its own terms. People do things in bulk that they don’t or can’t do in other parts of the grocery store, whether it’s shoveling psyllium husk into biodegradable bags or picking through bins of granola with their bare fingers. What happens in bulk stays in bulk, mainly because it can’t happen anywhere else. I think of it as the grocery store’s equivalent of the Wild West, self-governed and a little feral.
I didn’t grow up with any knowledge of the bulk section. Although our midwestern university town had a people’s food co-op, my parents did their shopping at Kroger, where my only brush with anarchy came from poking smiley faces into plastic-wrapped packages of raw meat.
My first meaningful bulk foods experience came years later when I was visiting a friend in Los Angeles. I was testing a recipe for vegan, gluten-free cupcakes that called for xanthan gum, soy powder, and several different flours. So I found myself in the Whole Foods bulk department, staring at a solid wall of granola and dried beans. It was disorienting — there were so many shades of brown — and I emerged an hour later feeling both enlightened and exhausted. The resulting cupcakes were a testament to the freedom and folly of so much possibility: I’d mistakenly bought soy flour instead of soy powder, which created frosting with the flavor of wheatgrass juice.
In San Francisco, I eventually became a regular at Rainbow Grocery, a 44-year-old food co-op that is a bulk aficionado’s Xanadu. The store’s website proclaims its bulk department is the largest in the Bay Area, with some 800 products; I once counted eight kinds of kimchi…
