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.

The Whole Foods Market stores in Georgia knew we had to do something – these farmers are our friends and an integral part of our local food community. All seven Atlanta stores rallied together to hold a Metro-Wide 5% Community Day on Wednesday, October 21st, to benefit the Georgia Flooded Farms Relief Fund in partnership with Slow Food Atlanta and Georgia Organics!

Three stores also held parking lot farmers’ markets where over 30 unaffected local farmers and food artisans sold directly to consumers and donated a percentage of their sales to the Relief Fund as well. Here is just a small sampling of the great folks who joined us: Will Harris from Harris Family Heritage Farms, Nicolas Donck from Crystal Organic Farm, and Hal and Drew Ambos from Ambos Seafood!

Wednesday was a huge success and raised a grand total of $23,939! Our National Produce Office also contributed a gift of $500!

Our stores are also holding a Donate-Your-Dime campaign for the entire month of October where you can choose to donate your $.10 reusable bag refund to the Georgia Flooded Farms Relief Fund. So far we have raised an additional $3,285 but we aren’t done yet. You can still take part: Donate-Your-Dime will continue until October 31st in all seven Atlanta locations.

Want to do more? Slow Food Atlanta has set up a page providing lots of information about the farmers and you can donate directly through their site to the Relief Fund. A huge thanks to all of our customers who have come through and helped these farmers in need.

Emily, a yankee-born converted southerner, joined Whole Foods Market in 2002. She devotes her free time to raising a daughter, and tending to a flock of 8 chickens and a backyard garden in the suburbs of Atlanta with her partner, Michael.

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.

Via Elisa Fresh Pasta

Elisa Gambino

Product: Fresh Pasta

What’s your family history with Italian food? My parents were first-generation Americans and before moving to the U.S. my grandmother was the baker in her small town in Italy. As a child my mother had a wood-burning stove in her backyard. My mother learned to bake from my grandmother and we always had the best pizza and other baked delights at home. So I think it was this experience that made me appreciate the wonder of a good dough!

What made you decide to start your food company? I started my food company because I could not find any freshly-made pasta here in Atlanta, and I thought that if I made wonderful pasta, people would enjoy it and become loyal customers.

What’s your fondest food memory? My fondest food memory was when I was a teenager and we moved to Rome and I enrolled in school there. I could not believe how wonderful the school food was; we had fresh pasta, fresh fruit salads, pork roast, roasted vegetables. Everything was made from scratch in a real kitchen where they made real food. I actually looked forward to the school lunches. It would be difficult to find children here in the U. S. that could wax poetic about their school lunches.

Which is the favorite of your products you make? I love everything we make or I would not make it. My favorite dish to serve when we have guests is a trio of freshly made tortelloni. I serve porcini tortelloni, roasted squash tortelloni and lemon tortelloni with brown butter and sage.

What has Whole Foods Market’s Local Producer Loan Program meant to you? The loan program made it possible for us to make our pasta faster without sacrificing the quality. We bought a super-speedy cutting machine with our loan. Whole Foods Market treats their vendors with respect, from paying their invoices on time to taking care when they display our products; they are the ideal customer.

Philomena Food Company

Philomena Aceto

Product: Italian breads

What’s your family history with Italian food? Well, I grew up in an Italian family where we cooked everything fresh, and we always had lots of traditional dishes. Meals were a big deal for us.

What made you decide to start your food company? I felt like I could do better than what was out there, and I have!

What’s your fondest food memory? That would have to be our Christmas dinners – the eggplant parmesan and stuffed artichokes. The homemade pasta – yummy!

Which is the favorite of your products you make? Our breads. Both stuffed and artisan, they’re a real quality product.

What do you enjoy about working with Whole Foods Market? I like working with Whole Foods Market very much. I have met a lot of great folks, and I have made some great friends. They are always so supportive when I am in the stores.

Blumetti’s Gourmet Foods

Jim Blumetti

Product: Pasta sauce

What’s your family history with Italian food? I am of Italian decent from both my mother and father’s side of the family. Both were first-generation Italian-American. My grandparents operated a small corner grocery store as I was growing up, where my entire family helped to make Italian-style items for sale along with everyday grocery and produce.

What made you decide to start your food company? By the time my own children were born, they had no connection to their Italian side of the family. All of my relatives had passed on, and the grocery store was a very distant memory. I wanted to give my children a sense of this rich history and the culture that was uniquely theirs.

What’s your fondest food memory? Helping my grandmother in the kitchen prepare foods for our very large family, extended family and the grocery’s store guests who would come to buy our products.

Which is the favorite of your products you make? All of my sauces are my favorite in their own way. Each has something in them handed down directly from my grandparents and great-grandparents. But I do tend to get stuck on a different flavor for a period of time, then move on to the next. Right now I’m in my “Artichoke Portobello Marinara” mode and loving it!

What has Whole Foods Market’s Local Producer Loan Program meant to you? The loan program was the only way we could have brought out 3 new sauce flavors at the same time as quickly as we did. Whole Foods Market has been extremely supportive of our personal challenges as a small business with patience and concern for our growth and stability.

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?

The Bag
Designed solely for Whole Foods Market, the FEED 100 reusable bag is made of organic cotton and natural burlap and is produced with a commitment to ensuring fair treatment of workers, livable wages, overtime pay and safe, clean working environments. It is a lightweight, fresh white tote that collapses easily into its base, which is a zippered rectangular burlap pouch emblazoned with the FEED logo and the number 100. An eco-friendly fashion statement that helps educate people about hunger and what we can do to alleviate it. It’s perfect to use for your groceries and for about 50 million other things too.

The Good
Each bag purchased provides 100 nutritious meals to hungry school age children in Rwanda through the United Nation World Food Program’s School Feeding Program.  In 1994, Rwanda lost 800,000 men, women and children to genocide; as a result, the nation’s economy and social structures were decimated. School feeding is one of the most effective solutions to stopping hunger and breaking the poverty cycle. Since 2003, the World Food Program has provided free, nutritious school lunches to Rwanda’s children in 300 schools in the most food-deprived areas. Each hot, nutrient-rich meal draws boys and girls to school, helps them learn, and may be the only meal they have all day. School attendance has grown from 63 percent to 93 percent, and to help close the educational gender gap, girls with good attendance may receive extra rations to take home to their families. Girls with just a few years of education have fewer children, have them later in life, and are better prepared to care for and educate them.

The Cost
When a Whole Foods Market customer buys a FEED 100 bag, $10 is donated by the FEED Foundation to the World Food Program’s Rwanda School Feeding operation, with the remainder going to cover the costs of making the bag and oversight of the program by the FEED Foundation. The bags are produced with high-quality, 100% organic cotton and natural burlap.  All FEED bags are made as eco-friendly and fairly as possible in audited and certified fair labor facilities. To further help the initiative, Whole Foods Market is not making any profit on these bags – in fact many of our stores are offering this bag for a special price of $25 for the holiday season – kicking in our own donation to help feed hungry children. If you aren’t close to one of our stores, check out online ordering through FEED.

Hope this helps make your holiday shopping (and gift unwrapping) more rewarding!

To learn more about the FEED Foundation, visit their website or check out this video.

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.

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!

Updated 09/16/08

Our team members have been incredible throughout this entire ordeal, working hard on behalf of the community, despite the personal hardships they have endured over the past few days.  We’d like to offer our heartfelt thanks for their efforts during this difficult time.

Initial estimates of the damage caused by Ike top 22 billion dollars, making it the third costliest storm on record in the United States.  Curfew in the city of Houston is in effect until Friday and our stores will continue operating limited hours until further notice.

Here’s the latest info from our Houston area stores:

Kirby
Open with city power and water.

Wilcrest
Open with city power and water.

Sugar Land
Open with city power and water.

Woodway
Opens today at noon.  Generator powered and has water.

Bellaire
This location is still without power and Bellaire Team Members have been sent to help out at our other four stores, which are still short handed.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Thanks to everyone who has sent well wishes for those of us who were in the path of Hurricane Ike. Wanted to give you an update on what’s going on from the perspective of our stores.

Throughout Houston, many of the roads are impassible due to downed power lines and trees.  Access to gas is extremely challenging since only a handful of stations have power to operate their pumps.

So far, we’ve been able to open three of our five stores for very limited pockets of time.  Among the hundreds of grocery stores in Houston, these three stores are part of about 20 grocery stores city-wide that have been able to reopen at all.

Ice is the primary need. We are bringing in about five trucks of ice a day. Each store gets about 30 pallets and we sell through this in a few hours.

Here’s a rundown on our specific stores:

Note: We are not publishing store hours here because they vary depending on the city curfew as well as the supply of ice and non-perishables available.

Kirby
We have power but no water. We can only sell non-perishables, fruit and milk.

Wilcrest
We have power but no water. Selling non-perishables only.

Sugar Land
We are fully powered and have water. Over the next 2-3 days, we will be fully functional in this store.

Woodway
This store is still closed due to lack of power and water.  Hope to have a generator connected soon.

Bellaire
This store is still closed due to lack of power and water.  We are hoping to restore power to this location soon.

Thanks to all of our team members who are working so hard to get these stores open so we can meet the needs of the community. Most of our team members are living without power and water just like everyone else. It is also challenging for them to get to the stores with roads impassable and gas hard to find. We thank everyone for their patience as we all work through this crisis together.

We will keep you updated with more information as it comes in.

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.

Shortly thereafter, a letter from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) was forwarded to me, which indicated the CIW was looking for our support in making systemic change for tomato pickers in Florida. In the letter, the CIW outlined their concerns about harsh conditions endured by workers in the tomato industry. We’d been aware of CIW’s activism relative to buyers of conventional sandwich tomatoes but hadn’t been engaged with the CIW ourselves largely because we don’t buy the type of conventional tomatoes that the CIW has traditionally targeted.

As readers of this blog know, Whole Foods Market is a mission driven company, and our core values include caring for our communities and our environment. Farm workers and consumers are part of our communities and both groups deserve assurance that our Florida tomatoes aren’t produced under inhumane conditions. Given the December indictments and subsequent customer inquiries, we decided to take a deeper look at Florida.

At no time have I had any evidence to indicate that any of our Florida growers/shippers are involved in illegal labor practices. Our produce team has an inspector based in the Southeast who regularly visits farms. He has consistently reported that workers are not working under coercive conditions and that they have free access on and off the farms.

To be diligent, we implemented a series of 3rd party farm audits including common social responsibility criteria based upon the following standards:  SA8000, Rainforest Alliance, SCS Fair Labor Practices and Community Benefits and Food Alliance. Our criteria include checks for child labor, discrimination, disciplinary practices, working hours, compensation, health and safety, management systems and environmental protection. Concurrent with the 3rd party audits, a small team from Whole Foods Market made trips to Florida, both to meet with CIW members and to make spot inspections at various farms. During this process we found no evidence that our growers/shippers were out of legal compliance.

Although we’re confident that our suppliers are operating within Florida law, this process helped us see that Whole Foods Market has an opportunity to proactively engage in improving the situation in Florida by creating incentives to improve conditions for farm workers. We signed an agreement to support the CIW’s “penny-per-pound” approach for tomatoes purchased from Florida, with the goal of passing these additional funds on to the harvesters. We also know that there’s more that can be done. Our Whole Trade Guarantee program is an obvious place to start.

The concepts behind the Whole Trade Guarantee include meeting our quality standards, providing fair prices to our producers, ensuring better conditions for workers and caring for the environment. This program has been implemented in other countries and we are excited to have the opportunity to work with the CIW, growers and other groups to create a domestic purchasing program modeled on these concepts. Stay tuned as we work on this in the coming months.

• 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.

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.

Because we had a generator in place, as of Wednesday we were able to open the Baton Rouge Whole Foods Market. Store hours are currently 10am to 6pm due to the curfew that is in effect from 8 pm to 8 am. Store hours will change after curfew is lifted. We still don’t have a full supply of perishables, but expect to be back to full staffing and products selection within the next few days. This is good news for the Baton Rouge citizens! Approximately 90 percent of Baton Rouge is still without power. The local power company announced a request for 10,000 technicians from various utility companies in 25 states to help restore the grid. We anticipate being very busy until the other grocery stores in the community can safely open their doors again.

The drivers from our Southwest Distribution Center in Austin were on the road with truckloads of ice and water for residents of Baton Rouge as soon as they were able to get into the city. We gave away 40 pallets of ice (two truckloads) and water to more than 500 people, with the ice being the most popular, by far.

As of Wednesday, more than 60 percent of New Orleans remained without power. Although he announced that citizens can start returning to their homes at midnight, Mayor Nagin reminded citizens that they should expect hardships for a while including no grocery stores, no gas stations, etc., and that some services will take days or weeks to be operational. There is plenty of gasoline but no way to pump it without power.

We hope to open our Uptown Arabella Station store by mid-day Thursday.  Although we are still in the process of replenishing our perishable food products, we want to serve the community in whatever capacity we are able. Luckily, the store did not sustain damage and our non-perishable product was saved. Our Team Members are returning from wherever they found refuge, although transportation back into the city is still challenging. It is likely that our selection and hours will be limited over the next several days.

Finally, we hope to open our Metairie store on Friday IF the power to the area is restored by then. Again, we’ll have limited selection and hours for several days.

We are deeply thankful that the loss of life and damage were relatively minimal with Gustav, and that we can get back to serving our communities as soon as possible.

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.

I love how Whole Foods mirrors you and your beliefs but most of all I respect your views on the Conscious Capitalism: Creating a New Paradigm for Business. It’s so easy for people to express your views but the real story is those who act on and live out their views. Whole Foods is such a model of this. Your Whole Planet Foundation and the wonderful things it does in Central America are amazing and is a story in itself and I invite everyone to learn more about how John and company are living his beliefs by helping single moms in Latin America.

I own and started a coffee company 2 years ago to help local homeless children in Atlanta and orphans around the world. For the past 2 years my business has grown through both on line orders and through the sale at churches around Atlanta Georgia. I recently approached Whole Foods Market – Southeastern Corporate Office about selling my coffee in the local stores. The easy answer would have been no – I don’t have any brand recognition and you already have so many great coffee vendors. However I was pleasantly surprised to get the response: you are a small local vendor and we like to support the small guys; and you are helping our community with your projects and we are an active member in helping our community so we would like to partner with you. I can proudly say I received my purchase orders this past week and my organic coffee will be on display this week at the 7 Whole Foods Markets in Atlanta. Doug Alvarez and John Simrell have been tremendous at helping me set this up and very supportive in believing in my vision to help homeless children. All the proceeds from the sales will go to a Family Crisis Center in Atlanta – where moms and children are left homeless due to spousal abuse. So your customers get to try a great new organic coffee while we get to help hundreds of homeless children. Doug and team are helping me setting up samplings and marketing so people will try a coffee that no one knows about – because as he says we at Whole Foods are all about community. Thank you.

But it gets better. While we were going through setting up the paperwork and them teaching me about Whole Foods, John Simrell told his financial team about our new partnership. Well your employees on their own had a quick on the spot “lets help” campaign. Your employees brought in hundreds of clothes, books, shoes and toys for the Family Crisis Center – so much I have carried 2 large truckloads so far. We haven’t sold the first bag of coffee yet but WE are already making a difference.

So many companies talk the game of helping community but its been truly amazing to see the Whole Foods culture and spirit at work. I recognize the risks your SE Office is taking in giving me, an unknown, some shelf space but its so refreshing to see a company do what they preach.

Again thanks for your new “Conscious Capitalism: Creating a New Paradigm for Business” – its very alive in Atlanta Georgia. Your beliefs are refreshing – but its such a wow to see them in action. Here’s to you and all the homeless kids we will help in Atlanta Georgia because of your love for life.

Sincerely,

Boake Moore
Mission Grounds Gourmet Coffee
“The Coffee Helping Children”