Kudos to Whole Foods

I never thought I'd say this about Whole Foods, an otherwise over-priced and yuppified purveyor of "organic" foods. I personally much prefer my neighborhood PCC, a crunchy-granola, refugee-from-the-sixties type of store. That said, I went to Whole Foods today to buy some star anise, a favorite spice of mine that's not available at PCC or the more pedestrian spam-stocking QFC. I picked up a $6 bottle of the stuff and would have willingly paid the price, but the cashier asked if I'd looked at the star anise available in the bulk spices aisle. Star anise is hard enough to find pre-packaged, let alone in bulk, so I'd never even looked.

Well, Glory Be! I bought a bottle's worth of bulk star anise for $1.67!!