This past Tuesday the cashier at the Briarcliff Whole Foods asked my wife for her phone number.

And before I could get myself over the counter and all up in his biznass, he quickly explained that he was only asking because Whole Foods was scoping out new locations for a store and compiling a database to see where customers come from to shop there.  (OK, the first part of that sentence didn’t actually happen, but you get the idea.) This morning, TeeRuss reports similar activity at the Whole Foods on Ponce.

Sure enough the websites of those two Atlanta Whole Foods, and ONLY those locations, have the following message up on their calendar this week.

Why are we asking for your home phone number this week? At the end of your transaction, we’ll ask for you number, which will be used to generate a map of where our shoppers come from. Only home phone numbers work for this type of map, and the maps help ensure we are supporting our shoppers’ communities as well as designating areas for potential growth within the market. Trust that we will only use your phone number for the purpose of generating a map. We will not share your number with any other group. Thank you for considering this request.

So if you head to either of these locations before Sunday, May 16th AND you have a home phone, don’t threaten bodily harm.  Instead, make sure you give them your number so they have a record of all the Decatur-ish folks stopping by, so they can build a store here!

Better yet, you can CLICK HERE, scroll down to Contact Us via Email, select “Store Location Request” and just enter your name, email address and zipcode and you can show your support for a Decatur store location.  The fact that these two specific stores are asking location surveys makes it seem like we might finally have a shot at getting a decent grocery store IN Decatur.