Beauty from within; ingredients made from fruits, vegetables, plants, seeds, and more; the clean and green beauty movements; and the rise of food-style textures in personal care products all point to the increasingly commonplace coincidence of all things food, wellness, and beauty.
The Whole Foods promotional event highlights not only that movement but also the trend among retailers in the grocery, mass, boutique, and specialty channels to curate personal care and beauty according to their own ingredient standards above and beyond those set by any government or industry group.
Whole Foods takes great pride in its in-house standards for organic product labeling. “The quality standards for our beauty department are unparalleled, and we hope shoppers will find their new favorite beauty product in our department during Beauty Week,” Maren Giuliano, global Whole Body executive coordinator at Whole Foods Market, tells the press in a media release about this week’s event.
Food, wellness, and beauty
Food, wellness, and beauty overlap more and more every day. This year already has seen the Clorox-owned brand Burt’s Bees launch a beauty-from-within collection of protein shakes and the indie beverage brand All Beauty Water join a functional food accelerator program to help grow the business.
A family run plum orchard has moved into the personal care ingredient business with a venture called Le Prunier. And late last year the grape juice company Welch’s got in the game too, teaming up with Blue Marble Biomaterials to develop ingredients for personal care and fragrance makers.
Retailer policies
Whole Foods instated its own organic personal care product labeling standards years ago, based on the idea that “that the definition of ‘organic’ should not change substantially between the food and the non-food aisles of stores,” as Cosmetics Design has reported before.
And more recently Target outlined a plan to eliminate certain ingredients from its shelfs altogether and encourage more transparent product labeling too. Financial analyst Craig Adeyanju of investopedia.com thinks that with this initiative “Target will earn the trust of green product enthusiasts and will be one of the go-to places for getting their green goods.”
The grocery promo
Beyond its tiered system of organic beauty product labeling, Whole Foods has a list of ingredients it won’t sell which includes phthalates, microbeads, triclosan, BHT, BHA, and aluminum chlorohydrate, according to this week’s press release.
As for the promotional event itself: “We’re thrilled to host our third annual Beauty Week and to offer great deals on our selection of beauty products,” says Giuliano. From today, Wednesday March 22, through Tuesday the 28th, Whole Foods is discounting facial skin care and cosmetics. And starting on Friday the stores will have limited edition beauty bags for sale as well. And, there’s a #CleanBeautyFaves sweepstakes too.