  urlLink The New York Times >  Magazine >  The Virtue in $ 6 Heirloom Tomatoes :  " To customers familiar with the company,  which is poised to become one of the 500 largest businesses in America ( it is currently 508 on Fortune's list)  and which recently began a conspicuous invasion of New York with a spectacular store at Columbus Circle and soon-
to- come emporiums in Union Square and Park Slope,  Whole Foods still carries a patchouli whiff,  a lingering reputation for being crunchy and countercultural and somewhat earnest.  Mackey says he thinks this is amusing as well as mistaken.  His customers are not alt- lifestyle types,  Mackey says;  nor does ethnicity or geography define them.  The company is growing at a steady clip in the South and Midwest;  it has increasingly wide appeal in Asian,
 Hispanic and African- American communities,  and it will open a store next year in center- city Oakland.  Mackey's market research suggests that Whole Foods doesn't appeal to any unique demographic these days other than highly educated people who are willing to spend more on what they eat.  The prices have lent the chain its unflattering nickname:  Whole Paycheck.  Yet just as it is inexact to dismiss Whole Foods as hippie artifact,  it is simplistic to ascribe its growth to the country's swelling class of luxury- seeking elites.
