Modern Love: Customers and Brands

Can the rub return to a caress?

A note from Rachel:

I recently spoke about Purpose Pledge at a natural products industry event, attended mostly by independent grocery stores and co-ops. It was a gathering of our people: the current stewards of epic bulk sections, local and organic produce, purveyors of the latest in health food technology, and stores willing to put their values front and center in their businesses. These are the connoisseurs and cultivators of that unmistakable health food store aroma.

Yet alongside this deep sense of community, a much-repeated narrative of disconnection kept surfacing:

Customers don't care about anything but themselves.

The farmers growing their food? Nope. 

The certifications brands pay for? Greenwashing to inflate prices.

Shopping in stores to support the local economy? Amazon is soooo much more convenient.

Ouch.

I felt like I was witnessing a marriage of 20+ years. There are kids, bills, and a mortgage, and the couple is still going through the motions out of mutual dependence. But between them lies a palpable chasm of contempt and mistrust. Love has curdled into obligation.

Part of me gets it. We've all been on the bad side of both sides. Some brands and businesses are extractive, greenwashing a-holes, and some customers are self-centered, fickle jerks.

Yet I questioned the certainty of this perspective, especially when it started to inform how the natural products industry should reshape itself to meet the demands of optimization culture: Better for you! Who gives a shit about the rest!

I kept thinking, "Really? I think at least some people do care. Fat and the Moon customers care, right????"

I'll be honest. For a beat, I let myself tip into natural products nihilism. For a minute, I stewed in the idea that customers only care about organic food if it's an ingredient in their protein-and-peptide smoothie, certifications are meaningless, herbal medicine is going to be "grown" in petri dishes, robots are going to replace farmers, everything is transactional, and we're all going to die miserable because we shat in the well we drink from.

But then something happened. I went into a health food store. If I had been blindfolded, I would have known exactly where I was. With one whiff, I knew I would find bulk herbs, sprouted bread, actual dirt on vegetables, a plethora of bioactive beverages and a badass community events board.

In that one core-memory-activating sniff, I remembered something that the industry's narrative of disconnection had almost made me forget: These places exist because people care.The relationships that built them haven't disappeared just because convenience culture has gotten louder.

And when we accept the story that nobody cares about anything beyond their own immediate benefit, we don't just misjudge each other. We begin to behave accordingly. We stop communicating what matters. We stop expecting reciprocity. We reduce one another to transactions. 

If we stop talking about the farmers, the ecosystems, the workers, and the communities behind our products because we've decided customers don't care, aren't we doing the race-to-the-bottom work of conventional capitalism? And in doing so, we become incredibly vulnerable to the real douchebags of capitalism, who are more than happy to take our money without the inconvenience of caring about, well, anything but the bottom line.

Like any relationship, communication is at the center of its success. Communication is the pathway to understanding, empathy, and, dare I say, love. And like any relationship, when we anticipate the worst in another, we're unlikely to show up with our best.

Love, 

R