CEO’s Blog

by Paige Brady, June 5th, 2008 | Permalink | Email this

Leave a Comment

Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on topic and not abusive. For more information, please see our Comment Posting Guidelines. If you have a store-specific inquiry, please contact your local store.

6 Responses to “CEO’s Blog”

1. Lauren Goldberg:

   RE: LOUIE BURBY, STORE CONCIERGE, WHOLE FOODS 3RD AND FAIRFAX, LA, CA
   Louie Burby’s love for his work comes shining through as soon as you meet him. He has a unique way of putting the customer at ease and always accomodates you and knows just how to find what it is you need from Whole Foods.

   Unlike other less personal supermarkets with flourescent lights, indifference to the customer etc., Mr. Burby makes you feel so comfortable that you actually feel more relaxed in Whole Foods than your own home. He is funny, charming and imbues perfect manners. He really needs to be the “face” of Whole Foods. If you ever do some kind of marketing campaign, you must keep him in mind.

   What an asset to a store such as yours! You are to be commended for finding such a rare kind of person. Yet, this is the kind of treatment and service that one expects from such a great market. Bravo and keep up the good work!

   
   June 5th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
2. Scott:

   Keeping to a healthy diet, I started to go organic after the major introduction of genetically engineered foods a few years back. Whole foods has managed to keep to its promise of organic produce. I don’t mind paying a little more for peace of mind and when I went to Hawaii and had to live without Whole Foods, I could feel the difference between eating organic and foods that were not organic. Whole Foods should be commended and congratulated for their efforts to serve the community good tasting and above all healthy foods.

   By Scott from San Jose, CA

   
   June 5th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
3. dbartko:

   SORRY TO LEARN THAT the Boulder Whole Foods is letting go of some senior staff due to cost cutting. One of the reasons we shop at Whole Foods is great customer service and happy well paid employees. I hope that this is NOT a trend because I can assure you that Wild Oats business went down hill when the employees were unhappy!

   
   June 5th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
4. Brooke:

   I love Whole Foods for its ability to give access to locally grown, sustainable foods while supplementing with organically grown and fair trade foods from elsewhere; its treatment and happiness of its employees; its seemingly better practices in taking steps towards being a “green” run company. I would like more info on how much waste is given to charities or composted and how that compost is used, what power sources the company uses for what, what building materials are being used in the new stores, and I would like visible signs of green! No bags would be great! Why give the option of a paper bag? Make people purchase a reusable bag made from 80% PC waste. Put traditional, natural soap in the bathrooms. Put towels in the bathrooms. Display that they are using all natural cleaners in stores. The recycle is awesome. The rain barrels are in front of some stores, but I do not see if they are being used for the store itself—can they be? Is a gray water system in place? A SIMPLE replacement I’d love to see is to go to cornstarch utensils! PLEASE! It is a simple switch. So many natural foods stores in my area do it, but not WF. Please let us see that! I’d love to hear comments about what is being done and what is planning to be done in the future!

   
   June 8th, 2008 at 3:18 am
5. Tina Freeman:

   The following appeared in The New Yorker Magazine 2/25/08. I would love to see more local produce and more information about how goods are transported to my local Whole Foods, New Orleans. If Tesco can do it surely Whole Foods can do it. I would like to see much less packaging in general. I really appreciated the compostable salad boxes, I would like to see more in other areas. I get wary when Whole Foods seems more and more like a traditional grocery store.
   “…Leahy, who is fifty-two, laid out a series of measures that he hoped would ignite “a revolution in green consumption.” He announced that Tesco would cut its energy use in half by 2010, drastically limit the number of products it transports by air, and place airplane symbols on the packaging of those which it does. More important, in an effort to help consumers understand the environmental impact of the choices they make every day, he told the forum that Tesco would develop a system of carbon labels and put them on each of its seventy thousand products. “Customers want us to develop ways to take complicated carbon calculations and present them simply,” he said. “We will therefore begin the search for a universally accepted and commonly understood measure of the carbon footprint of every product we sell—looking at its complete life cycle, from production through distribution to consumption. It will enable us to label all our products so that customers can compare their carbon footprint as easily as they can currently compare their price or their nutritional profile.”

   
   June 15th, 2008 at 10:11 am
6. Winnie:

   @Tina Hi there! You can find information on Whole Foods’ locally sourced products here: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/products/locallygrown/index.html. There’s some general information about the company’s link to local and product/vendor information organized by region. Hope this is helpful to you!

   
   June 16th, 2008 at 9:35 am