Whole Foods Market — Restaurant in San Jose

I like the Allegro Roasters in the Whole Foods on Gilman in Berkeley – I think they roast and brew very good coffee. So, having about 45 min to spare at Amtrak in San Jose I decided to nip across Alameda Street to Whole Foods for a pick-me-up. Tons of seating, both sunny and shady; the café / juice bar is small but cheerful; staff members were friendly. I had a batch-brew coffee and then returned two minutes later for a donut. Kind of silly to buy a donut from them for $3 when you can pop into the main WF store ten steps away and pick up something for half the price. Both the coffee and donut were good – would welcome pastries from a local bakery (the Gilman café has pastries from Firebrand bakery in Oakland). They select good beans and roast them well, giving them a lighter roast but not totally blond.

In addition to the normal rating, I’m also giving this Whole Foods café 4/5 green stars for social and environmental impact.

Allegro coffee has pretty good purchasing standards – in 2014, 23% of the coffee was Fair Trade certified, 50% was organic, 29% was Rainforest Alliance certified, and 2% was Smithsonian songbird-friendly certified. I know that coffee can be responsibly sourced without the need for certifications, as long as there’s transparency, and I feel that where Allegro could to do a better job. For example, Counter Culture Coffee publishes the prices they pay for coffee and share extensive information on their relationship with individual farms. Better, more current, reporting would be appreciated. Whole Foods does a good job at waste minimization (clearly labeled bins for composting and recycling) and most materials are eco-friendly, but their coffee cup lids are not compostable. Their regular milk is Clover Organic. One bonus is that you can eat anything that you pick up in Whole Foods (or make yourself), so you can find food that suits your needs to go with your coffee. In general, Whole Foods is recognized as a decent employer that provides good benefits and environment for staff.

Find out more about green-star ratings at Green Stars...

Whole Foods is an excellent store however they are one of the most expensive grocery stores around. I guess that's because they grew up that way and Jeff Bezos is still greedy. As a disabled individual, I have a different view of the world. For the most part, they usually get somebody extremely helpful to help me shop for my groceries. For the vast majority of the time did people live to help me speak English extremely well. The food they sell at Whole Foods is generally very fresh however, the bananas are generally not very fresh and the fruit is a hit and miss. So, buyer beware. One should be extremely careful about buying prepackaged sliced meat at Whole Foods because prices are generally insane. If 1 is a prime number, then that can point out the bargains that are offered on a daily basis. Your palate must change based on the current offerings that they are on special. Every couple of weeks they have great deals on meat, but you must pay attention to the prices that are offered and compared them to the original prices. It's not frequent that you will find a price offer over 10% discount however sometimes they do offer up to a 50% discount with the Prime Membership. One needs to be very careful but the dates on the products that are offered with a prime discount because usually they are nearly expired products. This goes for the bread especially. The meat is generally very fresh. And if it's on Prime, it's generally a pretty good deal but, one must really be careful about looking at the original price the item being offered. For example, currently they are offering king salmon for $26.99 and it was originally priced at $32.99. So, just because it is on Prime does not mean it's a...

Update: I have returned to this location several times and have had a much more positive experience with the store and products purchased. The fresh scallops I recently purchased and strawberries were very good. The staff remain very helpful and friendly. Parking is easy and when it gets busy they quickly open additional registers. I also like that they have an Amazon Return counter at the location. I am changing my review from one star to 4 stars.

Just moved to the area and this was my first time in the store. The store is clean and the staff are very friendly. I am extremely disappointed in the produce. The avocado we chose looked fine but had several deep dark spots that had to be cut out and the raspberries were mushy. The ones on top looked fine, but below total mush. Makes me wonder if they are keeping produce longer than they should. I recently got significantly better quality organic produce at local Grocery Outlet that was considerably cheaper. I was also disappointed with the prepared food selection, so few options. I think another reviewer commented on this. I expect more of Whole Foods, not sure when we'll be back again. Interestingly someone replied to my review and asked that I go to a whole foods URL. WHen I got there I had few options to share my feedback except to call and "chat". The chat was a complete joke. The person or computer responding made no sense. I'll post the snip below. Even more disappointed with you Whole Foods and not allowing you to take up any more of my time. Changing review from 2 stars to 1 star because of...