From Mental Floss, here’s some pretty interesting stuff about the store who has the nickname of “Whole Paycheck” due to their high prices. I really like the idea of a sliding employee discount (#6) based on the idea of keeping employees healthy. The idea of employees knowing how much everyone makes? Not so sure about that one. 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. But overall it does sound like they do a lot of good things to keep their employees engaged.
With more than 350 stores 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.
1. THE CO-FOUNDERS LIVED IN THEIR FIRST STORE.
When John Mackey and Renee Lawson Hardy opened their first all-natural foods store in downtown Austin, Texas in 1978, they didn’t particularly care whether it was a storefront or a residence—though Mackey thought it would be “fun” to operate out of a home. After finding a house zoned for commercial use, the two converted the first floor to a sales area featuring food, produce, and coolers. A café 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 there.)
2. …WHICH MEANS THEY ALSO HAD TO BATHE IN THE DISHWASHER.
Because the property wasn’t approved for use as a residence, it had no shower facilities. When Mackey and Lawson couldn’t grab a shower elsewhere, they cleaned themselves using the dishwasher hose intended for their café dishes.
3. THE FIRST “OFFICIAL” WHOLE FOODS STORE GOT FLOODED.
By 1980, Mackey had merged with another health food store, Clarksville Grocery, and neither had wanted to keep their original name. (Mackey’s had been called SaferWay, a dig at the SafeWay grocery chain.) The two settled on Whole Foods, and the new store ran smoothly for about a year—until the worst flood in Austin’s history hit, causing $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.
4. THEY ACQUIRED A FOOD AND TOY STORE.
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’re no longer in the amusements business, the company still uses the Bread & Circus name if a new territory may already have an existing (unaffiliated) Whole Foods store.
5. EMPLOYEES CAN SEE WHAT EVERYONE MAKES.
Mackey, who is now co-CEO of Whole Foods, enforces what he calls “no secrets” management. Every store has a ledger in which the annual salaries of all employees—even executives—are available for any worker to see.
6. AN EMPLOYEE’S CHOLESTEROL LEVEL AFFECTS THEIR DISCOUNT.
In an effort to keep their workforce from keeling over, Whole Foods arranges their employee discount percentage on a sliding scale. If you’re a smoker, overweight, or otherwise afflicted, you get the standard 20 percent. But if your lungs are clear, your cholesterol levels are within range, and your BMI is in check, you’re eligible for up to a 30 percent discount.
7. EMPLOYEES GET “VOTED IN” BY OTHER EMPLOYEES.
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-dayprobationary period. At the end, existing team members can vote on whether they want a person to stay on permanently. Since company bonuses are tied to performance, it’s not really a popularity contest: teams want workers who can raise profitability.
8. ONLY ONE STORE SELLS LIVE LOBSTERS.
Citing an inability to control lobster treatment across the country, only the Portland, Maine Whole Foods makes live lobsters available 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.
9. BUT LOTS OF LOCATIONS SELL RABBIT MEAT.
Bunnies: adorable pets, or satisfying, protein-enriched meal? If you’re partial to the latter, several Whole Foods locations offer rabbit meat due to what they claimed were “repeated customer requests.” In 2014, bunny activists incited a series of “hopping mad” headlines by protesting the decision.
10. EMPLOYEES CANNOT STOP SHOPLIFTERS. (UNLESS THEY WANT TO BE FIRED.)
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 after he chased and detained a shoplifter outside of a store in Ann Arbor.
11. YOU CAN’T BUY ASPIRIN THERE.
Because Whole Foods considers the painkillers aspirin and ibuprofen to be artificial, they do not sell either. Instead, the chain offers customers “natural” remedies for cold or flu symptoms, which prompted Forbes.com columnist Steven Salzberg to criticize the company for selling supplements that are under no FDA obligation to prove some of their claims.
12. THEY USED TO HAVE AN “ENGLISH-ONLY” LANGUAGE POLICY.
Prior to 2013, speaking any language other than English while in the store would have been aviolation of company policy for employees. When two Albuquerque, New Mexico employees complained about the edict, they were suspended. According to the New York Daily News, Whole Foods asserted the employees were penalized for other reasons; regardless, the policy was revised.
13. THERE’S AN ICE RINK AT COMPANY HEADQUARTERS.
The company’s flagship store in Austin has become something of a tourist destination, with a domed ice skating rink on the building’s rooftop, open during the winter months.
14. SOME OF THEIR DAIRY PRODUCTS WERE DISCOVERED TO HAVE BEEN MILKED BY PRISONERS.
What better sustainable labor than our nation’s penal system? In 2014, Fortune magazinediscovered 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.
15. THEY CONFESSED TO OVERCHARGING CUSTOMERS.
The perpetual joke about the chain being renamed “Whole Paycheck” for its pricey inventory got a little more real after New York’s Department of Consumer Affairs found 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 the company had made mistakes but had not intended to mislead consumers. Besides…
16. THEY’RE GOING TO OPEN A CHAIN OF LOWER-PRICED STORES.
That “Whole Paycheck” jab really stings—enough that the company is plotting to launch a chain of reduced-price stores dubbed 365 by Whole Foods Market. (365 is the company’s 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.