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.

With stores all over the country (and in Canada and the U.K.), we have a lot of team members who travel… a lot. Alana’s post about eating well when traveling inspired me to check in with some of our enlightened travelers to find out about their healthy travel routines. Here are their secrets. What are yours?

From Jody:

I find that minimizing stress is a really simple way to enhance wellness during traveling. For me, this means getting to the airport early, being prepared (researching parking beforehand, having your boarding pass printed out, have your liquids in the baggie), not rushing during the travel, keeping a mellow and patient attitude when you encounter other potentially cranky travelers or during delays, and having calming music in my ipod for the plane. I also bring rescue remedy (I hate turbulence!) as well as some calming supplements or tea. If I remember, I bring a small spritzer of water with a couple drops of essential oil to freshen my skin during the plane ride, as the air can be dry and stuffy. And I always remember to pack my daily supplements: a multi, probiotics, fish oil and a mushroom (or immune enhancing) supplement. Read the rest of this entry »

Comment #350 *
Leela of Morrison, TN
Her favorite festival food is veggie corn dogs with mustard!

Leela will be receiving two general admission tickets to one of the greenest festivals around, Bonnaroo!  The festival runs from June 11th – 14th and Whole Foods Market will be right in the middle of the action in Planet Roo with our well stocked natural and organic general store, open daily from 10am – 2am.  Visit us for delicious treats and staples such as frozen fruit bars, fresh fruit and veggies, wheatgrass shots, organic string cheese, gluten-free granola, vitamins and more, plus goodies from our supporting partners: Lifeway Kefir, ONE Natural Experience, Qbel, Talenti Gelato, and Greek God Yogurt.Leela will be receiving two general admission tickets to one of the greenest festivals around, Bonnaroo!  Visit us for delicious treats and staples such as frozen fruit bars, fresh fruit and veggies, hummus, organic string cheese, gluten-free granola, vitamins and more, plus goodies from our supporting partners: Lifeway Kefir, ONE Natural Experience, Qbel, Talenti Gelato, and Greek God Yogurt.

Check out our full product selection and other cool info on our Whole Foods Bonnaroo Facebook page.  See you in Manchester, TN!

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* This comment was randomly chosen using random.org.  No, we didn’t look for someone from Tennessee who happened to live in a town fourteen miles from the festival.  It was a complete coincidence.  We thought about tossing it out and re-doing the random selection but that wouldn’t have been fair, would it?

What do Bruce Springsteen, bio-diesel generators and Whole Foods Market all have in common?  We will all be at Bonnaroo 2009 from June 11th – 14th!   Want to be there too? Read on for info about winning tickets!

So, some of you may be asking, “What is Bonnaroo?” Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival is a four-day, multi-stage camping festival held every June on a beautiful 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee. The festival brings together over 120 of the nation’s top acts and emerging artists in rock and roll, jazz, Americana, hip-hop, electronica and just about any contemporary music you can think of. Every year, 90,000 attendees from all across the country descend upon Bonnaroo to witness dozens of epic performances as well as experience around-the-clock attractions and activities, including a discotheque arcade, onsite cinema, comedy theater, silent disco, beer festival, environmental and music technology villages and street theater performers to name a few.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wow! We were amazed by the number of entries to our online Mother’s Day contest – 1400+ comments. Thanks to all of you for sharing your product recommendations and mom stories. We loved reading them all! In fact, we couldn’t stop with one $100 gift card winner, so we also have named 5 Honorable Mention winners of a FEED 100 reusable bag.

Hope you all had  a very happy Mother’s Day, everyone!

WINNER: Willis Weber

That is how I would celebrate my wife on this very special Mother’s Day for us!

My wife and I were surprised a few days ago with a premature son! Born 30 days early, Henry came in time to make my wife a full-blown mother on this Mother’s Day! For her I would buy the world if I could! But limiting it to products found in Whole Foods is ok, too.

FIRST, a plethora of organically grown daisies! (Her favorite flower and the same one I gave to her on the day I asked her to marry me.) Cut or potted it doesn’t matter. Regular or Gerber it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they are organically grown Whole Foods daisies for my wife!

SECOND, for appetizers, she craves the freshly made guacamole at Whole Foods. Just enough flavor and kick! A bag of 365 non-salted white corn tortilla chips to dip with.

NEXT, more apps! This time baked brie and bread. She’s had to watch which types of cheeses she ate while pregnant–the hardest to give up was brie. And this Mother’s Day meal would be the first time she’s had brie in over 8 months!

FOURTH, her main course, freshly-made sushi from the deli section in Whole Foods. Sushi is another one of her favorite foods that was nixed from her diet during pregnancy. Sashimi, Tempora, California Rolls…all of it because she loves it so much!

FINALLY, for dessert, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s FroYo Half-baked. I still remembered when she discovered the froyo version of it, she went bonkers! And the only place to carry it is our local Whole Foods.

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It’s in the job description: moms have to make up all kinds of rules. Some moms are particularly gifted at this part of the job: “Don’t run with scissors.” Others, not so much: “No whiskey before noon.”

Let’s have some fun sharing our Moms’ rules about food and eating – maybe even pick up some new ones! For example, I tell my daughter that she can only eat pizza if she has a side salad along with it. Here are a few of the “Moms’ Food Rules” collected from my teammates.

• You don’t get a dinner roll until your salad/veggies are gone.
• No quesadillas without pintos on the side.
• Taste your food before adding table salt.
• Take three bites of everything on your plate.
• Can’t buy a packaged cereal if sugar is one of the top three ingredients.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Don’t snitch the cookie batter – there are raw eggs in there.
• No mac and cheese without peas.
• Wait an hour after lunch before getting back into the pool.
• At picnics: a little dirt never hurt anyone and you can’t taste ants.

What are your favorite rules from your mom or the rules you’ve made up for your kids? We’d love to hear them!

Wow! We received nearly 300 comments on our SXSW Food Blogger Bash post.  Thank you to everyone who left us a note; we love hearing from you guys!

And without further ado, the winner of the SXSW Gift Bag Giveaway is… Comment #3 from Michele Pineda!

Congratulations, Michele and thanks again to everyone for posting!

After four days of running between panels, keynote speakers and core conversations during the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) Conference, I was exhausted and needed refuge from the madness of the Austin Convention Center.

Thankfully, I’d received an invite to the Austin360.com SXSW Food & Wine Blogger Bash, sponsored by Whole Foods Market and Go Texan and hosted at our flagship store’s wonderful Lamar Culinary Center. Little known fact – I started with Whole Foods Market as catering staff for the Lamar Culinary Center, so I know the place well and was very pleased with how the cooking school space was transformed to house not only a foodie meet & greet, but also wine tastings from the GO TEXAN wine program and demonstrations from two of the best chefs in town – Tyson Cole from Uchi and Jesse Griffiths from Dai Due Supper Club.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most important things Whole Foods Market does is expressed in our first Core Value: Selling the highest quality natural and organic products available. You’ll find that statement on our walls, our website, our brochures, etc. But what do “natural” and “organic” mean, and who sets the definition? I’ll start to get into the nitty gritty details of these questions in this post. For background, you may want to check out my introduction to the topic of quality standards from last week. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been avoiding this post. Not because I don’t love talking about what I do, but because I couldn’t figure out how to shrink this topic – an overview of our Quality Standards – into an easily digestible post. But then our lovely blogmistress (Paige Brady) told me I could write a series rather than a single post. Yeah!

Just as I was breathing a sigh of relief, she hit me with this bombshell: Could you use the first post in the series to explain our Quality Standards in a way that an 11-year-old can understand? What!?

Seems that she was in our downtown Austin store over the weekend with her daughter’s 11-year-old friend, who had never been to our store before. She was thoroughly enthralled and amazed – remember your first step inside our store? Anyway, the friend asked, “Is everything here organic?” and Paige said “no” but that everything was natural. And then fumbled through various attempts at explaining what natural means – realizing as she rambled that a typical 11-year-old doesn’t have the background to understand how much junk is in our conventional food supply. Paige eventually came up with this: “You won’t find blue ketchup here because ketchup comes from tomatoes and tomatoes aren’t blue in nature.” And the friend got it: “So, ketchup is red here?” Yes. Read the rest of this entry »