E
ating healthy is fun and organic is sexy. By spreading this message through his giant
PHOTOS: WESLEY MANN 2015/AUGUST (1), WHOLE FOODS MARKET® (5)
health food temples, John
lowed to earn more than 19 times as much as an average employee. Mackey is very serious about things like this. When he travels, he books economy class and spends the night in inexpensive hotels. He drives a Honda hybrid. A few years ago, he referred to economics as the “greatest force for good on the planet,” while touring the States with Conscious Capitalism, his bestselling book.
Mackey revolutionized the food industry. Mackey is the founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market – a former hippie and student of philosophy who dropped out of college and ended up creating a superompanies, he argued, were incapable of existing without market empire that’s traded on the stock exmaking a profit, but they also had a higher purpose. He cited change. Whole Foods has over 400 stores in the Google, Nordstrom, Southwest and Patagonia as examples of USA and branches in Canada and across the companies that had created social value that was positively reflected pond in Great Britain. Mackey, who was a vegetarian before going in their bottom line. “Very few people find it inspiring just to maxivegan, sells more than just groceries. He sells a clear conscience and mize profit,” says Mackey. More than 30 years ago, he drew up a manthe promise of good health and wellbeing. His customers are generifesto on this topic. It still underpins the guidelines governing Whole ally well-to-do, and tend to stop by Whole Foods on their way home Foods. There’s more to operating a business than just doing well financially: you have to concern yourself with the wellbeing of workfrom yoga class – perhaps even in the company of Angelina Jolie or ers (or team members, as they are called at Whole Foods), customers, Charlize Theron. Supermarket shelves at Whole Foods are stocked with hemp and camel’s milk, tofu and quinoa. Fruits are showsuppliers, the environment and the community. Mackey gives genercased and illuminated like artworks. ously and has donated stock options to And because it’s evidently so easy to foundations and animal welfare organizations. Whole Foods has also foundspend hundreds of dollars there, the ed three charitable foundations: Whole store has earned itself the nickname Whole Paycheck. A quick look online Planet, Whole Kids and Whole Cities. at some photos bears this out: an emu Yet Mackey remains a staunch capegg for $34.99; truffles for $93; organic italist. Several decades ago, he comalmond butter for $23.99. Best of all: a pared unions to herpes. In fact, he spicy tuna roll for a cool $491.59. sometimes gets a little carried away Mackey and his then girlfriend with his remarks and doesn’t always opened their first natural foods store weigh his words before speaking. on the ground floor of an old house But he is also an unusual chief execin Austin, Texas, borrowing the monutive in other ways. Some years ago, ey for their venture from friends and he took a five-month sabbatical to hike family. Mackey was 25. There was a the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to small restaurant upstairs and they Maine with friends. When it comes to economics, he has quite Republican lived on the floor above it. As there were no showers – Mackey enjoys tellviews. This makes him controversial. ing this story – they used to wash usIn 2009, he wrote a comment in the ing the dishwasher hose. In 1980, Wall Street Journal saying that the Afalong with two other people, the young fordable Health Act aka Obamacare couple opened the first store bearing was completely unnecessary. Later, he the name Whole Foods Market. This even described it as being “fascist.” was no longer a small organic grocery Liberals were outraged and called for a Whole Foods boycott. Numerous scanbut a supermarket operating on 1,000 dals and lawsuits followed, claiming, square meters of space and providing Hiking and yoga help to keep John Mackey fit. jobs for 19 employees. And instead for instance, that stores in New York He stopped eating meat years ago, became av egetarian and now identifies as a vegan. were systematically cheating customof stocking only bland-tasting grain products, this store sold meat and exers by manipulating the scales, or cellent chocolate, beer and wine, breaking completely with what was that products were not nearly as healthy as they claimed because traditionally sold at health food cooperatives, as the The New Yorkthey contained sugar or carcinogenic substances. The biggest crisis er quite rightly reported. Mackey told the U.S. magazine that Whole struck when it transpired that for about eight years, Mackey had been bad-mouthing a competitor on a stockmarket forum – under a pseuFoods was his “child” and that he was “Daddy” to his employees. In 1984 Whole Foods began expanding into other parts of Texas and donym, no less. Simultaneously, his online persona praised Whole opened its first stores in Houston and Dallas. It expanded to the West Foods and even himself, writing “I think he’s cute.” Whole Foods’ Coast just a couple of years later. Whole Foods is still headquartered shares plummeted after these embarrassing revelations. The company is also feeling the effects of it’s pioneering efforts and the new in Austin, where Mackey and his present wife also live. Since 2006, thinking it introduced, also to its competitors: Today, nearly every suthe boss has paid himself a symbolic salary of one dollar. e explained his reasons for doing so in a letter to his employees: permarket, even Walmart, has an organic food section. “I am now 53 years old and I have reached a place in my life Mackey’s claim to faim was that he popularized natural foods, drawing them out their niche and making them mainstream. But sales have where I no longer want to work for money, but simply for the joy of the work itself and to better answer the call to service that I slowed and Whole Foods laid off 1,500 workers in the fall of 2015. The feel so clearly in my own heart.” Furthermore, the CEO pledged company recently launched a discount chain called 365. The aim of that Whole Foods would put $100,000 into an employee emergency these stores is to target millennials – in other words, the future. The fund, signing the letter “Love, John.” At that time, there was already first stores have already opened on the West Coast. A really good CEO a rule in place at Whole Foods that said top executives were not alhas a nose for the zeitgeist and follows its lead.
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