Business Wed Jun 24 2009

Organic, Except When It's Not

Chicago filmmaker and environmentalist Dorothee Royal-Hedinger is traveling the country examining the sustainable food movement with OrganicNation.tv. She's been home for a bit, and decided to check out Doc's Juice and Smoothies, a Bucktown spot that touts its organic ingredients. Only they might not be organic, as Royal-Hedinger and partner Mark Andrew Boyer discovered.

However, as we were leaving, Dorothee asked the barista if the drinks were indeed organic, and she replied, "No, but they're all-natural."

Since leaving the store, we've made numerous attempts to contact Doc's owners or managers to clear up the discrepancy, but our emails bounce back and none of the listed phone numbers appear to be in service. I'm not sure why Doc's is so blatantly false advertising (even the URL is docsorganic.com), but I do know that I probably wouldn't have forked over seven bucks for a drink had I known that it contained conventional ingredients.

So, the question is, should Doc's change its name? Are they "greenwashing" their product, making customers believe they're getting one thing when it's actually something else? What do you think?

— Andrew Huff / Comments (0)