UPDATE: Looking for alternatives to Whole Foods?
UPDATE 2: Whole Foods has censored its blog, removing all negative comments. Luckily, choice negative quotes were copied. See below.
Update 3: Whole Foods moved comments from its Healthy Eating blog to a Health Care forum (h/t to @meredithmo via Twitter). Is your comment there?
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Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey wrote an editorial for the Wall Street Journal this week, in which he counters President Obama’s call for reforming the health insurance industry.
I’m not going to spend a lot of time taking down his upper management, corporate tunnel-vision argument. I mean, HSA’s? Really? Sure, maybe that works for the slackers hosing down your organic kale, Mr. Mackey, but those $2500-5000 deductibles aren’t a great option for families.
Rather, I’m more curious why he wrote this editorial at all. Was it to defend Whole Foods from burdensome intrusion of government? Does Mackey fear rising product prices on Whole Foods shelves due to increased health care costs for the company? Will Whole Foods slash labor because the company can’t afford to insure all its employees under ObamaCare? We have no idea. Mackey barely addresses his own company in the editorial, rather, he simply attacks reform and leaps into a policy debate, and his insights as a CEO are apparently immaterial to his argument.
And that’s fine. He can speak as John Mackey the Corporate Right Winger. But there’s no denying that Whole Foods has benefitted from cultivating a groovy, lefty, hippie clientele, and a groovy, lefty, hippie atmosphere, and one wonders how groovy, lefty, hippie customers (and stockholders) feel about a CEO who turns out to be an Eisenhower Republican – slash – libertarian, targeting a favored goal of the left like this.
Wait! We don’t have to guess. Here’s exactly how they feel. (See Update 3 above).
More here: Mackey’s Betrayal of the Whole Foods Brand
Google the CEO amd you will find he is a dark souled human and always has been. Cold, calculating, and dis-honest. What a tool.
Near the end of your blog, I felt so happy and suprised to be given the link along with the quote “here’s exactly how they feel.“ LOL and +1 for you. Very witty, my friend.
Those are some pissed, over-priced “natural” food buying customers.
I love that.
FormerWFCustomer says, “I too will be voting with my pocketbook and will be now shifting about $250 spent per month at WF to the local co-op.”
Statchick agrees and says, “I will no longer shop at Whole Foods, and will ensure that I spread the word to others to no shop there either.”
Oh, and let’s not forget 2200 who said, “Incredibly disappointing. Basically, Whole Foods is a fraud.”
So far, there are 5 pages of message board responses, all very willing to take their money elsewhere to shop.
Thanks again, El Dragon. I enjoyed reading all of that. Nice work.
From Tom0063 on the Whole Foods Forum
Dear Mr. Mackey,
This is a good-bye letter.
I have loved Whole Foods, but that romance is now over.
Your recent article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “The Whole Foods Alternative to Obamacare” has turned me from a friend and boring consumer into a true enemy of your company. I guess you find it exciting to have such. Your motivations must be more ideological than commercial.
In that we may be kindred souls.
Besides the unacceptable ideas in your article, the use of the incendiary “Obamacare” epithet now, when the right wing is on the verge of a nervous breakdown was irresponsible and repulsive.
WholeFoods is well on its way to being the new Wal-Mart: a place where respectable progressives are ashamed to visit.
I hope your stores fare as well as your ideology does in the coming years.
As for me, I will become an evangelist for the organic sections of our local supermarkets.
May the best man win.
Sincerely,
Tom Fennell
PS We will also be preparing a warm welcome for Trader Joe’s here in Omaha!
This is a great letter….I hope more folks write. I do not have a Whole Foods in my area, and I used to really want one. I even wrote and asked that they come. I will now have to write a letter and tell them I have changed my mind, please just stay away.
This A-hole profits from progressive consumers and now he wants to deny people healthcare by shooting down a progressive idea that he can’t profit from? Um, what a scuz.
In his May 17, 2008 commencement speech to Bentley College in Waltham Massachusetts, John Mackey said before he writes anything he applies a couple of simple rules:
1. How will this either help or hurt the fulfillment of my own deeper purpose in life, especially its impact on Whole Foods Market?
2. How would I feel if that was printed on the front page of the Wall Street Journal or The New York Times—because it just might be? If I feel good about the possibility of everyone knowing about it then it is o.k. However, if I would feel embarrassed or ashamed, then I’m going to have to change it. This has been a subtle lesson for me about the refinement of motivation and purpose and it has taken me many years to learn it. If you are able to learn it while you are young you may be able to avoid a great deal of unnecessary pain and suffering.
I’m thinking he should have taken his own advice and kept his opinions to himself on this one.
Timothy M.
http://www2.wholefoodsmarket.com/blogs/jmackey/2008/05/21/bentley-college-commencement-speech/#more-27
Exactly, Timothy. He didn’t need to spout off, which is what totally slays me here. Now he’s got an insurrection on his blog and calls for a boycott? Brilliant.
What? Mackey couldn’t get his sock puppet to write that WSJ piece for him??
Is ONE of the best lines in this letter. Another favorite of mine is when Mr. Tom Fennels says “Whole Foods is well on its way to being the new Wal-Mart: a place where respectable progressives are ashamed to visit.”
Amen, brother.
On a personal note, while I was in New York this summer (before I made all of these changes to my diet and my philosophy), I enjoyed a good salad from their salad bar. A Comedian in NY said in his stand up routine, “I went to Whole Foods the other day…..just because I wanted to see what rich people eat.” He got a big laugh from the audience. So true.
Hey, Maybe Whole Foods wants only George Bush republicans as customers? I can’t WAIT to see the rest of the backlash in the coming days and weeks from his article.
Yeah, we’ll see how much stomach “the rich people” have for protesting a gelatto bar.;)
But if even a small percentage of shoppers wake up and decide they need to take their dollars elsewhere, right on. Better for grocery co-ops, better for farmers markets, and better for small producers who can’t sell product to WFM anyway.
Odd. All negative reaction to Mackey’s WSJ piece has disappeared from the link you posted. Hmm. I’m guessing that Mr. Mackey is probably having a few regrets right now. I’m waiting for the other side to start encouraging their minions to shop WFs.
Timothy M.
Not surprising but thanks for the word. Good thing Luchadora Felina copied down some of the more choice quotes!
Now I wish I had copied all 7 pages of comments as of this morning. People are definitely angry that Whole Foods has deleted their posts. A revolt has officially begun. Looks like the moderators have moved posts around and are generally pissing people off. Here’s a link with current posts, after pages and pages have gone missing. Now it’s become a game of ‘post your opinion and see how long it lasts on the site.’ They have also bolded in red their Forum guidelines.
This was just posted by a member named Wholepaycheck: If you are planning to spend your hard-earned progressive $ elsewhere, please call or visit your local store to let the manager know WHY.
U.S. National Offices
World Headquarters
Whole Foods Market, Inc.
550 Bowie Street
Austin, TX 78703-4644
512.477.4455
512.477.5566 voicemail
512.482.7000 fax
2:17pm Eastern on August 13, 2009
Reading these posts has officially become my new form of entertainment.
eroubal writes: Please stock a new CEO that doesn’t write Rush Limbaugh inspired drivel in the name of your otherwise good brand and cause me to be revolted at the idea of spending another dime in your store.
Thanks.
Part of what’s going on here in this revolt is some VERY interesting dynamics in the kind of healthy lifestyle “brand” that Whole Foods has so successfully created for itself. It’s not that Whole Foods shoppers want Mackey to be a good democrat. That doesn’t explain the red-hot anger in the comments we’re reading on the WFM site. It’s that these shoppers have been asked to identify with Whole Foods on a lifestyle level, a communtiy that helped build the organic industry and ushered in a roots movement of cooking, food, clean farming, etc.
And health is a part of that, Mr. Mackey. I think this CEO has utterly miscalculated how much ownership this healthy lifestyle community might feel over health care reform. As pontiff of the health cult that is Whole Foods, Mackey should be leading the charge for health care reform, not torpedoing it publicly (from the WFM shopper’s point of view).
From the outside looking in, people who don’t understand this community aspect to Whole Foods’ brand are going to listen to these freaked out shoppers and go, “Jesus Christ, it’s just a grocery store.” But it’s not. It’s not a red state – blue state thang either. Mackey’s bretrayal runs to the core of what WFM is.
I think that any poking of John Mackey is quite fair; however, I don’t see the need to ridicule the workers as “slackers” or to ignore that that it is the workers who create the atmosphere. They may, or may not, buy into the brand, that isn’t the point. The issue should be focused on the CEO and his brand.
As a self-identified member of the slacker generation I actually have a great fondness for that word and use it affectionately (though that obviously didn’t come across). I’ve also been that dude who hoses down the organic kale in health food stores. But I totally see your point.
First he alienates new shoppers and the fence-riders by saying he sells a bunch of junk.
Then he turns his guns on the core constituents that helped him dismantle the coop movement and monopolize the natural food movement
I’m thinking beautiful pictures and top-notch advertising just couldn’t cover up his seething righty roots any longer.
too bad co-ops stray from getting political, this could be an interesting opportunity for em’ to capture the flock that have now lost their shepard.