{"id":1039,"date":"2015-07-14T08:25:27","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T15:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/?p=1039"},"modified":"2015-07-14T08:37:00","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T15:37:00","slug":"16-organic-facts-about-whole-foods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/?p=1039","title":{"rendered":"16 Organic Facts About Whole Foods"},"content":{"rendered":"
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From Mental Floss<\/a>, \u00a0here’s some pretty interesting stuff about the store who has the nickname of “Whole Paycheck” due to their high prices. \u00a0 I really like the idea of a sliding employee discount (#6) based on the idea of keeping employees healthy. \u00a0The idea of employees knowing how much everyone makes? \u00a0Not so sure about that one. \u00a0 Perhaps the executives, but unless they’re very careful about making sure everyone is paid fairly, I can see it becoming an issue if one cashier knows another one (who doesn’t work hard) is making much more than her and so on. \u00a0 But overall it does sound like they do a lot of good things to keep their employees engaged.<\/p>\n

With more than 350 stores<\/a> across the country, Whole Foods has become synonymous with both vigilant eating habits and losing weight via your wallet. Before you make your next stop to select the perfect mango, take a look at these 16 facts about the company and some of its more unusual policies.<\/em><\/p>\n

1. THE CO-FOUNDERS LIVED IN THEIR FIRST STORE.<\/em><\/h4>\n

When John Mackey and Renee Lawson Hardy opened their first all-natural foods store in downtown Austin, Texas in 1978, they didn\u2019t particularly care whether it was a storefront or a residence\u2014though Mackey thought it would be \u201cfun\u201d to operate out of a home. After finding a house zoned for commercial use, the two converted<\/a> the first floor to a sales area featuring food, produce, and coolers. A caf\u00e9 was on the second floor, and the third floor was an office and sleeping area, where Mackey and Hardy spent their nights. (They had been evicted from their apartment for storing food<\/a> there.)<\/em><\/p>\n

2. …WHICH MEANS THEY ALSO HAD TO BATHE IN THE DISHWASHER.<\/em><\/h4>\n

Because the property wasn\u2019t approved for use as a residence, it had no shower facilities. When Mackey and Lawson couldn\u2019t grab a shower elsewhere, they cleaned themselves using the dishwasher hose<\/a> intended for their caf\u00e9 dishes.<\/em><\/p>\n

3. THE FIRST \u201cOFFICIAL\u201d WHOLE FOODS STORE GOT FLOODED.<\/em><\/h4>\n
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Whole Foods Market<\/em><\/div>\n

By 1980, Mackey had merged with another health food store, Clarksville Grocery, and neither had wanted to keep their original name. (Mackey\u2019s had been called SaferWay, a dig at the SafeWay grocery chain.) The two settled on Whole Foods, and the new store\u00a0ran smoothly for about a year\u2014until the worst flood in Austin\u2019s history hit, causing<\/a> $400,000 in damages. In a testament to the consumer loyalty the company had already managed to create, several non-employees volunteered to help with the clean-up. It re-opened less than a month later.<\/em><\/p>\n

4. THEY ACQUIRED A FOOD AND TOY STORE.<\/em><\/h4>\n

Part of the Whole Foods expansion plan throughout the 1980s and 1990s was acquiring a series of natural foods stores. The most unusual was the Bread & Circus chain out of Massachusetts, which paired healthy food selection with an inventory of wooden toys. Though they\u2019re no longer in the amusements business, the company still uses<\/a> the Bread & Circus name if a new territory may already have an existing (unaffiliated) Whole Foods store.<\/em><\/p>\n

5. EMPLOYEES CAN SEE WHAT EVERYONE MAKES.<\/em><\/h4>\n

Mackey, who is now co-CEO of Whole Foods, enforces what he calls \u201cno secrets\u201d management. Every store has a ledger in which the annual salaries of all employees\u2014even executives\u2014are available<\/a> for any worker to see.<\/em><\/p>\n

6. AN EMPLOYEE\u2019S CHOLESTEROL LEVEL AFFECTS THEIR DISCOUNT.<\/em><\/h4>\n
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Whole Foods Market<\/em><\/div>\n

In an effort to keep their workforce from keeling over, Whole Foods arranges their employee discount percentage on a sliding scale. If you\u2019re a smoker, overweight, or otherwise afflicted, you get the standard 20 percent. But if your lungs are clear, your cholesterol levels<\/a> are within range, and your BMI is in check, you\u2019re eligible for up to a 30 percent discount.<\/em><\/p>\n

7. EMPLOYEES GET \u201cVOTED IN\u201d BY OTHER EMPLOYEES.<\/em><\/h4>\n

Most Whole Foods stores are broken up into various branches: front end, produce, meats, etc. If an employee wants to join a particular team, he or she is given a 45 to 90-day<\/a>probationary period. At the end, existing team members can vote<\/a> on whether they want a person to stay on permanently. Since company bonuses are tied to performance, it\u2019s not really a popularity contest: teams want workers who can raise profitability.<\/em><\/p>\n

8. ONLY ONE STORE SELLS LIVE LOBSTERS.<\/em><\/h4>\n

Citing an inability to control lobster treatment across the country, only the Portland, Maine Whole Foods makes live lobsters available<\/a> to customers. Each one is kept in its own tank to avoid overcrowding. Once purchased, the crustaceans are killed via mild electrical shock (from a device called a CrustaStun), sparing them from having to endure the inevitable boiling pot of water.<\/em><\/p>\n

9. BUT LOTS OF LOCATIONS SELL RABBIT MEAT.<\/em><\/h4>\n
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Bunnies: adorable pets, or satisfying, protein-enriched meal? If you\u2019re partial to the latter, several Whole Foods locations offer rabbit meat due to what they claimed were \u201crepeated customer requests.\u201d In 2014, bunny activists incited<\/a> a series of \u201chopping mad\u201d headlines by protesting the decision.<\/em><\/p>\n

10. EMPLOYEES CANNOT STOP SHOPLIFTERS. (UNLESS THEY WANT TO BE FIRED.)<\/em><\/h4>\n

Whole Foods takes a hard line when it comes to someone playing hero: no employees are allowed any physical contact with customers, and that extends to shoplifters. In 2007, employee (and former Marine) John Schultz was fired<\/a> after he chased and detained a shoplifter outside of a store in Ann Arbor.<\/em><\/p>\n

11. YOU CAN\u2019T BUY ASPIRIN THERE.<\/em><\/h4>\n

Because Whole Foods considers the painkillers aspirin and ibuprofen to be artificial, they do not sell either. Instead, the chain offers customers \u201cnatural\u201d remedies for cold or flu symptoms, which prompted Forbes.com columnist Steven Salzberg to criticize<\/a> the company for selling supplements that are under no FDA obligation to prove some of their claims.<\/em><\/p>\n

12. THEY USED TO HAVE AN \u201cENGLISH-ONLY\u201d LANGUAGE POLICY.<\/em><\/h4>\n

Prior to 2013, speaking any language other than English while in the store would have been aviolation<\/a> of company policy for employees. When two Albuquerque, New Mexico employees complained about the edict, they were suspended. According<\/a> to the New York Daily News, Whole Foods asserted the employees were penalized for other reasons; regardless, the policy was revised.<\/em><\/p>\n

13. THERE\u2019S AN ICE RINK AT COMPANY HEADQUARTERS.<\/em><\/h4>\n
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The company\u2019s flagship store in Austin has become something of a tourist destination, with a domed ice skating rink on the building\u2019s rooftop<\/a>, open during the winter months.<\/em><\/p>\n

14. SOME OF THEIR DAIRY PRODUCTS WERE DISCOVERED TO HAVE BEEN MILKED BY PRISONERS.<\/em><\/h4>\n

What better sustainable labor than our nation\u2019s penal system? In 2014, Fortune magazinediscovered<\/a> that cheese maker Haystack Mountain had an agreement with Colorado Corrections Industries that allowed prisoners to milk goats for a salary of $300 to $400 a month. The resulting cheese wound up being sold to Whole Foods and other retailers.<\/em><\/p>\n

15. THEY CONFESSED TO OVERCHARGING CUSTOMERS.<\/em><\/h4>\n

The perpetual joke about the chain being renamed \u201cWhole Paycheck\u201d for its pricey inventory got a little more real after New York\u2019s Department of Consumer Affairs found<\/a> that area stores were exaggerating the weights of prepackaged items, sometimes overcharging by as much as $15. In a YouTube video released in July 2015, Mackey and co-CEO Walter Robb admitted<\/a> the company had made mistakes but had not intended to mislead consumers. Besides…<\/em><\/p>\n

16. THEY\u2019RE GOING TO OPEN A CHAIN OF LOWER-PRICED STORES.<\/em><\/h4>\n

That \u201cWhole Paycheck\u201d jab really stings\u2014enough that the company is plotting<\/a> to launch a chain of reduced-price stores dubbed 365 by Whole Foods Market. (365 is the company\u2019s in-house brand.) The stores are intended to compete with organic insurgents like Wal-Mart, which has been cutting into market share in recent years. Finally: rabbit stew and prison-crafted artisanal cheese at prices to fit every budget.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Mental Floss, \u00a0here’s some pretty interesting stuff about the store who has the nickname of “Whole Paycheck” due to their high prices. \u00a0 I really like the idea of a sliding employee discount (#6) based on the idea of keeping employees healthy. \u00a0The idea of employees knowing how much everyone makes? \u00a0Not so sure Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retail-companies"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1039"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1058,"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions\/1058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-tales.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}