September brought rain to Georgia and lots of it! At first, people were excited. Our lakes and rivers were replenished and our gardens and farms were happy, but then it kept raining… and raining… and raining. Georgia suffered severe flooding, which caused damage to people’s homes, cars, businesses and even families. Among those affected by these horrific floods was a group of small farmers who lost their crops, structures, equipment, precious topsoil and livestock.

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Since you meet them in the aisles of our stores, you probably know that our Whole Foods Market Team Members are passionate about food. What you may not know is that our local vendors are some of the most zealous food people you’ll ever find! These folks have devoted their lives – often at great financial risk and always with great personal dedication – to making high-quality, natural food. Pretty incredible!

One inspiration for some of our producers’ love for food is their family history. Italians are well-known for great food and enthusiastic eaters, and our Local Producer Loan recipients are no exception. Elisa Gambino, Philomena Aceto and Jim Blumetti were all inspired by their Italian roots and took some time to talk about their products and their passions. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes I find gift giving especially challenging. With all the need in the world, why the heck should I get Aunt Mary Lou a new apron? She has 10 already! What I really want to do is make a donation or give a charitable gift in her honor. But then there’s nothing tangible to unwrap and somehow the family turns me into the Scrooge of the season. “Why can’t Paige give normal gifts like everyone else?”

If a version of this story plays out for you, the Feed 100 Bag just might be the perfect option. Here’s the deal: you buy the Feed 100 stylish reusable shopping bag to give as a tangible gift and part of the proceeds go to providing 100 meals to hungry Rwandan school children.  Win-win, right?

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Whole Foods Market’s Jeff and David give Willie a big check.

Farm Aid and Whole Foods Market go together like locally grown peas and carrots! Anyone that was lucky enough to attend the Whole Foods Market sponsored event on Saturday would have to agree that the talent and energy around the show was truly inspirational. With performances from the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, The Pretenders, John Mellencamp, Neil Young and, of course, Willie Nelson, the message of support for farmers and local producers was loud and clear.

The Whole Foods Market Boston local teams outdid themselves with the massive task of catering 3 full meals for the VIPs, production crews and artists along with offering tons of free tote bags and product samples for any of the 30k+ attendees that stopped by our booths. The grand prize winners of our “Destination Summer” online sweepstakes (and lucky us, they’re farmers too!) also had a blast, eating great food and grinning ear to ear the whole day. Kudos to everyone who had a hand in this huge undertaking!

Our guest writer, Honey Thompson, works on our marketing team and had an absolute blast helping out at FarmAid.

Updated 09/19/08

We just for an email from Sandra ‘Mama’ Himes, our Executive Coordinator of Operations with an update about our Houston and Sugar Land store hours!

All of our Houston area stores, including our location in Sugar Land will be open 9am to 9pm on Saturday and Sunday. Next week, our store hours will be 8am to 9pm and after then, we will return to our regular hours.

Thanks to everyone for hanging in there with us.

Updated 09/17/08

All Houston Stores will be Open Tomorrow
As of 1:15 today, all of our Houston locations and our Sugar Land location have been restored with full city power and water.  Our Bellaire store will open tomorrow and all of our locations will continue operating with limited hours.  Specific hours are still variable due to low stock and shorthanded staff, but we will let you know once we have been restored to regular hours.

Ice, Wifi and Cell Phone Charging Available at Whole Foods in Central Ohio
Between 8 and 9 p.m. Tuesday, both Whole Foods locations, Lane Avenue in Upper Arlington and one in Dublin on Sawmill Road, will be giving away free ice to anyone who needs it. There is a maximum of 50 pounds per customer. Ice also will be available around 10 a.m. Wednesday. Plus, Whole Foods Market in Dublin has outlets to charge cell phones and free WIFI.

Read more about power outages in Central Ohio.

We will continue to provide new updates at they come in!

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I’m very happy to announce that Whole Foods Market has signed an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) designed to help improve wages and working conditions for Florida tomato pickers.

I put together this blog entry to explain the steps we took that led us to make this agreement.

Just before Christmas of 2007 I became aware of a slavery indictment in Florida related to a contract harvesting operation and we received some questions about whether any of our Whole Foods Market suppliers were connected to the persons named in the suit. Our suppliers were not connected to the indicted parties in any way, but the story got my attention.

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We’re in the midst of preparing for what may potentially be one of the worst storms in Southeast Texas since 1900.  We operate four stores in Houston and one store in Sugar Land which will be closing tonight at 10:00 p.m. and shall remain so until further notice due to Hurricane Ike. Those stores are at:

• 4004 Bellaire Blvd, Houston, Texas 77025
• 2955 Kirby Drive, Houston, Texas 77098
• 15900 Southwest Freeway, Sugar Land, Texas 77478
• 11145 Westheimer Road, Houston, Texas 77042
• 6401 Woodway #149, Houston, Texas 77057

All of our other Texas stores will remain open for business. We hope that everyone in the Houston area makes it through all right and we’ll keep you posted on any new developments.

**Update: Friday, September 5th**

We are well on our way to recovery! A huge public thank you to everyone who has helped us get to this point so we can help meet the needs of our communities. There’s more to be done and we are up for the challenge!

• Our Baton Rouge store is up and running – moving off generator and onto city power. This store will be open from 10am to 6pm daily until the city curfew is lifted.

• Our Arabella Station store (New Orleans) opened for a while on Thursday. We do have city power back there as well.  Hours are not defined at this time (team members are making their way back to town). We expect to be running normal operating hours in the next few days.

• Our Metairie store (New Orleans) also has their power back so they will open at 10AM Friday. Reduced hours for now but should be running normal operating hours in the next few days.

• Our store in Little Rock was also affected by now Tropical Depression Gustav. Lost power Wednesday but got it back last night. Team Members scrambled to save product and reset the store, which will open at 8am Friday.

Thanks, everyone!
**Update: Thursday, September 4th**

Hello Louisiana! Want to give you all an update as you plan to make your way back to your homes. We got the following scoop from our leadership team in the Southwest Region.

Last week with Hurricane Gustav headed for the Gulf, our emergency preparedness teams were in the New Orleans preparing for the storm. Just before our Team Members and their families evacuated from the city, we managed to empty our New Orleans stores of most perishables. These foods are extremely susceptible to spoilage during power outages and can cause serious health hazards during cleanup, so we have a leg up on getting opened by moving that stuff out. We also moved store-sized generators from elsewhere in the region to the New Orleans area so that we could be up and running as soon as possible and practical.

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This comment came in to John Mackey’s CEO blog this week and I thought it was worth sharing here — cool story about Mr. Moore’s coffee company and what they are doing (story starts in the 3rd paragraph).

Dear Mr. Mackey -
I love your passion for life and your refreshing ability to express yourself so well in the media – both in speeches and in this blog. It so cool in this society to see a leader such as yourself to express his views on love and life but more importantly your gracious views of and respect for your parents is so critical in this society. We need more people to express their values and to not be afraid to express them even when they may not be so well received in this culture. Thanks again for your two wonderful speeches and your love of life and love and parents.

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