Do you know what's weird? I have to reach all the way over in a strange little spot to turn on the recording. I think it should be easier than that. I don't know why.
Am I sitting here complaining? Listen to me. Oh my goodness. What day is it today?
It's Thursday. And I haven't done a damn podcast all week. What in the hell? Does it matter with me?
Oh well. I went to lunch at Hooters with my son today. We'll talk about that and we're going to talk about Whole Foods in just a minute. And welcome to the almost daily grateful except for when I only do one podcast during the week so far.
And it's Thursday. Hi everybody, I'm Michael Croes. I hope you're having a terrific day. All kinds of stuff I want to talk to you about.
First of all, I have a, how old is he now? 1980. He's 44 years old. I have a 44 year old son named Tyler.
Yeah, he's like awesome. He's like really, really awesome. And he and my favorite ex-wife, which is ex-wife number two, Diane, who I talk about all the time, went to lunch at Hooters today. And I have not been to Hooters in a while because I'm unozimbic.
All right? And ozimbic makes me not hungry. And I do my ozimbic injections on Wednesday, which was yesterday. And I went to Hooters and I usually get, here's what I get.
I get like 10 wings and a bunch of fries and yeah, and I eat them all and then I come home and yeah, kind of what is Hooters to me, man? I've got to tell you, Hooters is an intestinal clean out system. Yes, it's a, what do they call it? Oh gosh, I'm missing the word.
Oh, it's a cleansing. Yes. There's no such thing, by the way, is a dietary cleansing where anybody who tries to sell you that, they're the S. But except for Hooters, if you go to Hooters and you have wings, it is a cleansing of sorts.
No, it's not. But anyway, I ordered wings. Tyler had wings. Diane had the Hooters salad and I don't eat salad because I just don't.
But it was really big. And boy, she was jumping into that thing and liking it a lot. Tyler and I are sitting together and we're, he's having beer. I don't drink.
I'm having diet Pepsi and we're just chomping down the, we're just chomping down the Hooters. Now let's talk about this for a little bit. Just a little bit. Number one, Tyler loves Hooters, absolutely loves it.
Those people there, they know him. He brought in his Hooters calendar to see if he could get some more signatures on it. And the young lady who took care of us, took the calendar away and had a bunch of her friends sign it. So that, that was good.
That, that was good. Now I had eight wings today. I didn't go for 10. I had eight and I had fries because I can't eat wings without fries.
I have not been hungry for fries, but I cannot eat wings without fries because the wings are so greasy. By the way, this is all my opinion that you got to have the fries to kind of, you know, counterbalance it. Does that make sense to you? I probably not.
It doesn't make sense to me either. But that's what I do. So I had eight and I only, and I did a special order. I said, I only won trummies.
I didn't want to deal with wings, you know, the bro, I just, this did trummies. And I didn't eat a lot of the meat off of my just ate the skin, which is the best part. And you know, so I did all, you know, I did all that and I, after about four, I was stuffed but I was, I don't, I don't, I don't bring food home from a restaurant. This is a, all of my wife's think this is quirky about me, but I do not bring food home from a restaurant, you know, in a box to eat it later.
I just don't. If I'm not going to eat it there, I'm not going to eat it. The whole thing is part of the experience. So I didn't do that, you know, but I decided I wasn't going to leave the wings behind either.
So I suffered through and it really wasn't suffering, but I ate all the wings. Tyler had 10 wings and fries, Diane had a big salad. So here's what we got. We got Diane has a hooter salad.
I have eight wings. Tyler has 10 wings, two orders of fries, Diane had water with lemon. I had a diet Pepsi, Tyler had two beers. Guess how much money left my bank account and went into Hooters bank account when we left for lunch today.
I want you to think about that. What do you think it would be? Now I've been doing this. We've been eating at Hooters forever.
All right. I've been eating for at Hooters forever. And Tyler and Diane and I have gone in there for dinner or for lunch for years, just literally literally years. The bill today was with a tip was around 75 bucks.
Does that seem like you? Or am I just being? I don't know. It was good.
It was worth it. I totally enjoyed hanging out with Tyler. I enjoy the whole experience of eating at Hooters. It's very nice.
And I just love Hooters wings. I mean, they're tasty as hell. They just really are. I go to other places to have wings and they're just not as good.
They're just, I don't know. They had that special little thing that they do and they're just better there. They're just absolutely better there. I've never seen anybody come out with anything even remotely close as far as my taste buds are concerned.
So that was fun. So then I come home and it starts raining like crazy. It's just, you know, the day just turned and I got here. I come in contact with somebody, not going to mention any names, who is, who shops at Whole Foods Market?
Do you ever go to Whole Foods Market? I must confess. I must confess. I have never been.
Is this a grateful podcast? I don't think it is. I'm reasonably not sure it is, but we'll go with this. I have never been to Whole Foods, but I have been lucky enough to eat some, a bunch of food that comes from Whole Foods.
As a matter of fact, I had a slice of cinnamon cake this morning from there. It was good. And so, but here's what I know. I've driven by the Whole Foods in St.
Petersburg. There is no Whole Foods around me, so I'd have to go to St. Pete to go to Whole Foods. Company was started in Austin, Texas in 1980 and it expanded rapidly through, I looked this up on this interweb thing because I'm curious about this and there's a bunch of stuff I didn't know.
It expanded rapidly through acquisitions and other natural food stores and chains. That's wonderful. The reason that they are so expensive is, well, because they're expensive and they like to put their stores in affluent areas. I guess I don't live in an affluent enough area.
I guess that's the case. I don't know, but I guess that's the case. Here's something else. I think maybe I heard it, but I didn't know.
They were acquired by Amazon in 2017 for $13.7 billion. Whoa. That's a lot. They're committed for high quality, natural and organic products.
The company's mission revolves around promoting health, wellness, environmental, sustainability and all of this. They insist on, they got rigor standards for the stuff they sell in there, banning over 100 preservatives, flavors, colors and other ingredients. That's good. That's good.
I like that. They offer a wide variety of organic, non-GMO and locally sourced products and they position themselves as the premium brand grocery market targeting the health conscious and environmentally aware consumers that have a lot of money because it costs a lot of money to go there. They're very expensive. Here's what I noticed when I drew, well, let's carry on.
I'll tell you what I, this is the one thing I've noticed about Whole Foods. They want their shopping experience to be really good, so they've designed the interior of their stores. They've never been in one, so they can't comment on that. They support local farmers.
That's good. They're in charitable activities. And then the one thing I typed in to chat GPT was talk about their strange parking lots because their parking lots are strange. Here's what they said.
One of the more peculiar aspects of Whole Foods stores is their parking lots, which have become somewhat notorious among shoppers. Several factors contribute to this reputation. Number one, location choices. Because they want to be where all the rich people are, the real estate there is very expensive, so they can't buy big pieces of property.
They have a proper parking lot. But when I drive by Whole Foods, I see people trying to get into the parking lot and find a place to park. I see as I'm driving down 4th Street in St. Petersburg and I look over to Whole Foods, the parking lot just looks like a place I don't want to go.
I just mean, maybe it's, I don't know. But it's their cramp parking spots compared to a public, for instance, big parking lots. And they attract a high volume customer leading to crowded parking lots, especially during peak hours. And yeah, because of the high traffic and compact spaces, it can sometimes lead to safety issues.
I have talked to two people who have been in fender benders and Whole Foods parking lots. I'm not going there. I'm not going there because I want, when I go to a restaurant, I want my dining experience to be pleasant. When I go to a grocery store, it's the same thing.
Publix has a thing that, you know, they're slogan for years since the 60s where shopping is a pleasure. And it is, public stores are laid out nice. They got a scale when you walk in the door, you can weigh yourself. Okay, that's nice.
I like that. And it's just a very, they're super clean and it's a pleasure to go in there. But I'm not going to go into a place where I got to compete with people to park and then scoot in and I just, no, that isn't happening for me. What's comparable to Whole Foods?
That's better, in my opinion. Now, this is biased as hell because I've never been to a Whole Foods. Although in my kitchen, right now, I can walk out this door here and go to my kitchen. It's a bunch of Whole Foods food, but I got it.
Okay. There's potatoes. I love potatoes. There's cereal out there.
I haven't done cereal in a long time because I've kind of stopped doing milk. So, you know, but there's one of the, they have like a cinnamon crunch, something cereal that's out there. And I think I want to try that. I don't know.
Just maybe just to reach in and grab a handful of it and munch on it. I don't know. But what's, what's better than that that's better to go or a better experience in my opinion. And again, my opinion is so screwed up since I've never been inside Whole Foods and I'm not sure if I ever will, but we'll see Aldi, if you've ever been to Aldi, first time I went to Aldi was in the 80s and it wasn't in the United States, it was in Germany.
And I was super impressed when I was in Germany at the Aldi grocery store, just super impressed. I was impressed with the layout. Their selection is not great. Maybe that's a European thing, but they have everything you need.
And the Aldi in the United States, they opened up one, not far from here, some years ago, and they don't sell a lot of name brand stuff. They sell a lot of their stuff. They also don't like dyes and preservatives and they want their stuff to be natural and all of this. And I love that.
And I also love the fact that they have these really weird German snacks, German chocolates that are really, really good. I love Aldi. I buy my steaks from Aldi. I get ribbed steaks from Aldi, a grass-fed and Aldi is not expensive.
Aldi is cheaper than Publix, a lot cheaper. I mean, you buy the same amount of stuff at Aldi compared to Publix, you're going to save money at Aldi. So I like that. Yeah, you got to bag your own groceries.
Big deal. And Aldi's really smart under shopping carts. If you go to, Tyler works at Publix, and he goes out and has to gather up shopping carts all the time. And not at Aldi, they don't do that because in order to get a shopping cart at Aldi, you got to put a quarter in this little thing on the cart and it lets the chain loose.
And when you're done shopping and you take your cart back to the cart place and you put that chain back in there, your quarter comes back out. How freaking clever is that? I like that a lot. So I'm grateful for Aldi and I'm not sure about Whole Foods.
I want you to give me your experience on it. Tell me what you think. I'm a little bit bewildered. I don't know.
Still don't know what I'm doing with this podcast. Changes are coming though. Changes are definitely coming. If you could see the inside of the studio right now, it is a total mess.
I got tripods. I got lights. I got microphones coming out my—but Judy, I'm telling you, there are microphones everywhere. There are mixers.
Really cool paintings that I bought from this lady at the middle of Spark. There's an original Peter Max up on the wall looking at it. Yeah. It's a cool studio, but it's a mess.
I got to clean it up. All right. We'll see you next time, which I hope is tomorrow. And if it's not, I'll see you soon.
And we'll figure out what we're going to do with this podcast. Have a good day, everybody. Bye-bye.