New Yorker too, I have have lived in all the boroughs and have also shopped Key Foods, C Town, Western Beef, Food Bazaar etc, as well as Trader Joe and Whole Foods.
I personally think it all boils down demography and subjective tastes. There's the millennial, "wannabe- australopithecine"/paleo crowd that tend to fancy WholeFoods and Trader Joes.
Then there's frugal crowd, or the majority that prefer function over form and don't cheer-lead unsupervised organic labeling.
There will always be someone ready to protect the rationale to pay a premium. The main problem is those who get roped into idolizing the hive-mind without noticing the sales pitch.
I'm not in NYC (Phoenix here) so can't really comment on the local markets there. Here in Phoenix, there's a chain called Sprouts that has produce about as good as Whole Foods (or AJs) while being quite a bit less. As for meat there's Basha's (owns AJs) which is a bit less, similar quality. For everything else there's Fry's (Kroger) or Walmart. In the end, it depends on most of what I'm looking for as to what store I'll go to. In general it's only when I want more mushroom varieties fresh that I'll venture into an AJs or Whole Foods. I don't do the boxed "organic" anything, as it's usually just overpriced with dubious additional quality.
I do wish more meat/egg sources labelled what feed they use as I find that influences flavor far more than organic v. not.
I personally think it all boils down demography and subjective tastes. There's the millennial, "wannabe- australopithecine"/paleo crowd that tend to fancy WholeFoods and Trader Joes.
Then there's frugal crowd, or the majority that prefer function over form and don't cheer-lead unsupervised organic labeling.
There will always be someone ready to protect the rationale to pay a premium. The main problem is those who get roped into idolizing the hive-mind without noticing the sales pitch.