Wal-Mart country and Whole Foods country are very different places.
Morgan Stanley is out with a retail "atlas" that breaks down retail stores by geography. Based on its data, we made the following maps showing the number of Wal-Marts and Whole Foods per 1 million people in each state.
Here's Wal-Mart: You can see it dominates in the center of the country. Arkansas, where Wal-Mart was born, has the most per capita with Oklahoma a close second. Wal-Mart is much less popular on the coasts.
Here's Whole Foods: It's not that big in the center of the country, but it's huge on the coasts. Colorado is also huge.
There are, of course, far more Wal-Marts than Whole Foods in each state overall, but it's fun to see where the stores are more and less concentrated. Bottom line: Whole Foods America is much more coastal, while Wal-Mart America is much more central.
Here are tables showing the number and the population-adjusted number of Wal-Marts and Whole Foods stores in each state:
