Another blue law is keeping Whole Foods Market from opening this Thanksgiving. Come Thanksgiving you better make sure you have enough free-range turkey and other festive ingredient the day before or your out of luck. David Lannon, president of Whole Foods Market’s North Atlantic Region, plans of opening Thanksgiving Day will have to be scrap.

All this hooha was all started by Shaw‘s Supermarket, a competitor of Whole Foods. According to the Boston Globe, Shaw’s Supermarkets sent a letter to Attorney General Thomas Reilly asking him to look into the matter. As a result of the investigation, the Attorney General’s office issued a letter to Whole Foods Market stating that “Whole Foods would have to keep its doors closed on Thanksgiving or risk criminal charges.”

We believe that allowing Whole Foods to open on Thanksgiving Day will create an unlevel playing field for all other retail grocers,” Shaw’s legal department wrote to Reilly on Nov. 4. “Besides disadvantaging competitors, a Whole Foods opening would harm consumers, due to lack of choice in the marketplace for consumers to shop and compare prices for the best deal.”

Thanks to Shaw’s, people will have to put up will inflated prices at convenient stores, if they even carry organic products that they need to buy at the last minute.

[Boston Globe]

Published Saturday, November 19th, 2005 at 6:43 pm in Whole Foods.