Convenience tips the scales

Whenever she's able to escape her desk at lunch, Laksmi Sam gladly treks the five blocks from her office in downtown Seattle to Whole Foods Market.

She slips through crowds to visit various food stations and fills her cardboard to-go carton with favorites: Caesar salad, shrimp, sesame kale, broccoli. And she typically leaves $10 to $12 lighter — a steep price for take-out, she says, but worth it to eat exactly what she wants.

"It's my dream come true," says Sam, 29, as we take in the surrounding bounty: organic salad fixings, Indian food, fresh sushi, glistening cut pineapple, wild salmon filets, mounds of cheese, steaming kettles of soup, whole chickens spinning above a fire, dainty frosted cupcakes. "I can mix hot and cold items. I love the variety. I love the selection."

"I don't come here when I'm poor. I come here when I want something good."

It's easy to get sticker shock when left to our own devices in higher-end supermarkets. When the spread is so pretty and so convenient, our eyes often grow bigger than our stomachs — and sometimes, our wallets.

At Whole Foods, where organic salad and global cuisine run $7.49 a pound and desserts like bread pudding and organic carrot cake $5.99 a pound, customers say they often get carried away with the tongs and ladles. And with no scale in the deli, it's tough to gauge how much you're getting (though cashiers will weigh items if you ask).

Convenience tends to come with a price (hello, airport food!). And chances are, the more pleasant the atmosphere and the higher quality the food, the more it's going to set you back.

Whole Foods, Metropolitan Market and other chains say their prices represent the cost of providing quality food and a diverse selection.

That's true, said Bert Hambleton of Hambleton Resources, a supermarket marketing firm based in Issaquah. But the price also reflects the cost of employing all those working behind the scenes to prepare selections and keep bins and kettles filled, the highly trained positions such as cheese and wine stewards, the inviting environment and the high rent of being near where we live and work.

"The thing that goes up in everyone's mind is ooh, they're making so much money, and ironically, they're really not," Hambleton said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says we as a nation now spend half of our food budgets on meals outside of home, double what we spent in 1970. And supermarkets are angling for a share of that money, competing with restaurants by playing to our desire for convenience and speediness with an ever-expanding array of ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook foods.

Customers would pay more for food if they could use the time they would have spent prepping and cooking to socialize with friends or play with the kids, the industry figured. And while it could be cheaper to buy groceries and cook at home, folks would appreciate the ability to buy precisely what they crave in the amount they actually want.

It seems they figured right. Deli sales now represent as much as a quarter of total sales at many higher-end and specialty stores, such as PCC Natural Markets. Total deli sales in supermarkets grew from $16.3 billion in 2000 to $21.1 billion in 2005, according to the Food Marketing Institute, an advocacy group for food retailers and wholesalers based in Arlington, Va.

"It's become a much bigger deal today than it was five years ago or even 10 years," Hambleton said. "One of the things they look for in additional sales is what's for dinner tonight. And they look enviously at the restaurant trade and say 'Hey, how do we get some of that back?' Because if you're eating food at restaurants, you're not eating it at home and you're not buying groceries,"

"We become their kitchen, their pantry, their refrigerator," says Ilga Westberg, a spokeswoman for Metropolitan Market, where women ranging in age from late 30s to mid 50s make up the bulk of to-go meal buyers. "We see people come in every night."

Panini sandwiches, made-to-order pizzas and fresh gelato also represent a larger share of what delis are selling, elbowing past standbys like mustards, salad dressing and lunch meats. Prepared foods comprised nearly 60 percent of supermarket deli sales in 2005, up from 38.5 percent in 2000.

Many markets are redesigning their delis to better appeal to all our senses, as well as our sense of wanting to eat healthier. If we feel good while we're there, the theory goes, we'll come several times a week and probably pick up other items along the way.

"There are a lot more people eating in our delis much like they would in a restaurant," Westberg said. "We saw that pretty early on and responded to it right away and made the delis bigger when we remodeled our stores."

QFC has taken the same tack, adding amenities such as olive bars, sushi stations and gourmet cheese kiosks when it renovates older locations, said spokeswoman Kristin Maas. PCC recently added pizza by the slice at its Fremont store, where deli merchandiser Jan Thompson notices customers, especially workers in their 20s and 30s, coming in up to twice a day for meals.

What do all these changes say about us? Some observers say bigger, fancier delis are a response to how crunched we are for time, plus our lack of culinary know-how. That said, we want to taste all the things we see in Gourmet or on the Food Network.

"You assemble these meals. It gives you a sense of accomplishment, but you're not actually cooking anything," said Richard Yalch, a professor of marketing at the UW business school. "There's definitely been an increase in choice and a perception that offering choice is good."

"The stores benefit because they make more on preparing the food and selling it as opposed to selling it raw."

All that choice adds up for shoppers, some of whom have developed coping strategies.

"Go light on things because it adds up big time. Just get tastes of things," Sam advised a friend visiting Whole Foods for the first time. Others say they build salads with the lightest vegetables possible, or stretch their purchases over multiple meals.

Some just don't think it's worth it.

"It's expensive," said Chris Cartwright, a 21-year-old student from Bellevue in the neighborhood for lunch, grimacing at his wrapped sandwich, bag of chips and a soda that would add up to around $10. He wasn't sure he would come back.

PCC Natural Markets has seen its produce section shrink over the years as deli foods grow in popularity, Thompson said. Other stores are shrinking the middle aisles to leave more room for delis, Hambleton said.

While he doesn't see the Wal-Marts and WinCos of the world jumping on the bandwagon, Hambleton predicts the prevalence of ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat foods will continue to grow. And at higher-end stores where much of the college-educated demographic can afford to be picky about the story behind the food, he doubts the price will stop shoppers from buying.

"I pay less attention to the price tag and more on where it was grown, how did it get here? When the total comes to $15, yeah, I'm surprised that it happened. But it wasn't the price that led me to buy that item. It was the way it was grown or distributed."

Karen Gaudette: 206-515-5618 or kgaudette@seattletimes.com