Rachael is part of our team dedicated to answering emails, letters and phone calls from our customers.

At Christmas, I went with my boyfriend to “meet the parents” and as we were driving along the highway he pointed to his hometown’s Whole Foods Market and said, jokingly, “There’s Whole Foods, I bet you’d love to go there since you get to see it every day!” He was trying to be funny, but I confessed that I actually love to visit our stores in other towns because each and every one I’ve visited is different. With the varied selection of prepared foods, regional specialties in our grocery departments and locally grown produce, each of our stores truly caters to the local flavor of the community.

But the community feeling is not limited to the products we sell. I hear from customers every day about how our Team Members make them feel like part of the family. One customer I spoke with was so used to the Team Members in her store knowing her personally, she was heartbroken that one of our Team Members didn’t know her name! She explained that the store was her spiritual family. While sweetly off-kilter, that call reminded me that our stores truly do make an impact in people’s lives.
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Rachael is part of our team dedicated to answering emails, letters and phone calls from our customers.

My job is all about talking to our customers and helping them get answers to their questions or concerns. I love my job, but I don’t think it’s a secret to anyone that customer service is a stressful line of work! When customers call me, they may have already talked to their local store and/or their nearest regional office and they haven’t yet been able to get a resolution to their concern. So, as a rule, the people I talk to can be pretty mad at times. So, I relish the customers who take the time to call us with their compliments.

Of course, it’s always nice to talk to someone who is kind, but these calls are especially nice because most of the customers who call to compliment us tell me about how awesome our Team Members are. Of course, I know how great they are but there’s something special about hearing our customers share their perspective about how our Team Members have gone far beyond the call of duty to help them in some way. One caller I talked to the other day really pulled at my heartstrings more than most and made me feel warm and fuzzy about what great people we have working for us. She said I could share the story in this blog post, so here goes.

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I work on the team in our Global Headquarters that answers customer emails, calls, and letters sent to our office. As I’m sure you can imagine my job can get hectic at times. However, I recently received this letter from one of our customers. When I opened the letter it brought a moment of pause to my day. I found customer Janyne’s story so touching. Her letter is a beautiful reminder that the little things we do, even if they seem little to us, can make a big difference to others, and if we treat people with compassion and love it will not go unappreciated. I thought the kindness shown by the Team Members in our Raintree store to Janyne’s family was worth sharing. After opening the letter I shared it with many of my fellow Team Members in the office, and now I’d like to share it with you – a little message of love and caring on Valentine’s Day.

To whom it may concern:

This letter is being written to acknowledge and thank the employees of the Whole Foods Market in Scottsdale, Arizona. Last fall I traveled to Scottsdale to help care for my 94 year old mother, Myrtle Jenkins, who had been placed under in-home hospice care. While there, I accompanied my father to the Whole Foods Market where he and my mother had shopped for the past five years. I assumed that my elderly parents were well recognized in the store, since few who reach that age are out doing their own shopping, let alone driving themselves to the store! When we began checking out, the cashier asked me about my mother and he was visibly shaken at learning she was nearing death. I was certainly taken back by this show of concern from a store employee!

A week or so later, my father once again returned to the store and as he was checking out, realized that a bouquet of flowers had been placed in his cart. When he told the cashier that the flowers had been mistakenly placed there, he was told that they were for my mother-from the store employees. Though we were extremely grateful for the kindness, we did not think that my mother would even be aware of the flowers, as she had very minimal sight at that point. To our surprise, she became quite animated and asked to touch them, then requested they be placed where she could see them-even asking about them during the days that followed.

It is a tribute to your employees, and I believe corporate vision, that this kindness was shown to my mother and our family. Thank you! My mother died November 4th, and my father has since then relocated to Roseville, California where my brother who lives close by has been sure to help him locate the nearest Whole Foods Market. I am sure the employees there are starting to recognize Kenneth Jenkins, the elderly, bent figure with the ready smile.

Again, thank you for the kindness shown to my family.

Sincerely,
Janyne McConnaughey, Ph.D.

Rachael is part of our team dedicated to answering emails, letters and phone calls from our customers.

When films like FOOD, Inc. (in select theaters on June 12th) open, people always contact us with questions about how we do things at Whole Foods Market. Sometimes the questions come from people who are our long-time, loyal shoppers and sometimes they come from those who are brand new to us and want to learn more. Some of my teammates and I checked out an advance screening of FOOD, Inc. so we could get a head start on answering the possible questions coming our way. Check out a trailer of the film:

FOOD, Inc. takes a peek into the supply chain of much of the food we eat and talks about the consequences of the way food is currently grown, raised and processed. Consequences like deadly new strains of E.coli, epidemic obesity, type II diabetes, pollution from pesticides and feedlots, and the effect this system has on people in the industry. Although this subject matter sounds both complicated and mind-numbing, FOOD, Inc. presents the information in an engaging and interesting way. I know that many of our shoppers are aware of the issues and concerns of the current industrial agriculture system and that they shop with us because we offer an alternative. I thought I would share some of the things in the film that I found compelling, and how we do things differently at Whole Foods Market. Read the rest of this entry »