Did you know October is Fair Trade Month? We’re celebrating with Fairhills Bus Stop Red and Bus Stop White. Both of these wines are products of one of the world’s largest Fair Trade projects, a joint venture between exporter, Origin Wine, Mendoza Vineyards in Argentina and Du Toitskloof Winery in South Africa. Over 1,400 farm employees and their families benefit from this unique social development project.
The Fairhills Bus Stop Red is full-bodied with aromas of berry fruit and chocolate and hints of plum on the lingering palate. It goes great with fall and winter dishes like hearty soups and stews, grilled meats like pork loin and lamb chops or pastas in red sauce. You don’t have to take our word for it’s great taste – The Beverage Institute’s World Wine Championships awarded it the Gold Medal. And what makes this wine taste even better? Proceeds are dedicated to purchasing a school bus for the children of the over 800 farm employees and communities of San Martin, Lavalle and Medrano in Mendoza, Argentina.
If you’re in the mood for something a little on the lighter side, try the Fairhills Bus Stop White. It has a creamy acidity on the palate with flavors of apricot and melon and aromas of lemon grass on the nose with a hint of spice. You can enjoy it with shellfish, grilled trout and vegetables, poached salmon or chicken dishes. This one brought home the Silver Medal in the World Wine Championships. Plus it will be so much more enjoyable knowing that proceeds from this wine are dedicated to purchasing a small bus to transport tourists from the city to the communities.
So raise a glass to Fair Trade this month and know that you have impacted the lives of over 1400 farm employees and their families. Salud! Cheers!
Picture this: it’s a hot August afternoon. You just ran a few miles and you are in need of some replenishment. You swing by your friendly, neighborhood Whole Foods Market to re-fuel. In front of the beverage cooler, you pause for a moment to consider the myriad items we carry. Like many of our customers, you might reach for one of our familiar brands that you know and trust – Naked Juice.
And that is a good choice. Naked Juice has taken a lead in the food industry in terms of scrutinizing their carbon footprint. They are making some cool choices to improve the sustainability of their production facility, their juice bottles and even the tasty stuff inside the bottles. Here’s how.
Their first big move will actually be that: a relocation into a brand new LEED certified production facility. This means they have met some pretty stringent criteria for water and energy efficiency, use of recycled building materials and waste reduction. Whole Foods Market has also gone through this certification with some of our new stores and it’s quite an accomplishment! Read the rest of this entry »
Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there! Hopefully, many of you were the recipients of your favorite treats today – quite possibly flowers! If you did get flowers and if they have the Whole Trade Guarantee™ seal on them, you can know that they helped support communities and families (and moms!) where they were produced. Here is the story of one mom behind the flowers.
Maria lives in Juan Pablo Sesundo, Colombia and works on a farm producing Whole Trade Guarantee flowers. She has been with the farm for 11 years (and working in the flower industry for 22 years). Maria works the flower beds in the greenhouse, maintains the crop and harvests the flowers. “Every day I come to work with a positive attitude filled with love that makes me want to do my best. Our farm is filled with people who love their job and are very devoted to producing the best and most beautiful flowers that we can,” says Maria.
February is Whole Foods Market’s Whole Trade™ Month and we are proud to be the first to launch in the US of A Fairhills Winery’s Fair-Trade Certified and Whole Trade Guarantee wines!
Fairhills Tierstel Daycare. 90% of the personnel were employed in the vineyards on all the individual farms where they stay. The daycare opened in 2006. In total, 85 children attend the specific daycare.
These wines, apart from being extremely tasty and yummy, also have the great distinction of directly benefiting over 1300 winery workers, vineyard workers, smaller farmers and their families with fair wages and fair prices for their crops. The Fairhills project covers three of the major growing regions in the wine world: South Africa, Argentina and Chile. Two continents, two great goals: to make great wine, and to improve the living and social conditions of all who participate in making the wine great! Read the rest of this entry »
Carol Medeiros joined Whole Foods Market in 2001 at our Cherry Creek store in Denver and has been working on our produce and floral team ever since.
You may remember Karen’s Whole Trade roses post from last summer, sharing the story of the Ecuadorian Fair Trade certified flower farms that supply our Whole Trade Guarantee roses. Well, with Valentine’s Day right around the corner, what better time to share an update on Whole Trade flowers with you?
I was one of the Team Members to visit the Ecuadorian farms. I look back on these trips & consider myself lucky to have been a part of them – such a beautiful country, incredible product, wonderful people and inspiring stories. Read the rest of this entry »
Community Relations Team Leader Shonelle Bellon from our Santa Cruz store shares her thoughts on Whole Trade Guarantee™ Month.
February is Whole Trade Guarantee Month! (Enter to win Whole Trade flowers for a year!) During the season of romance, we are also celebrating fair wages, environmental sustainability and philanthropy throughout the world. When you’re shopping for Valentine’s Day gifts, I recommend browsing our Whole Trade Guarantee™ beautiful roses and decadent chocolates (Divine Chocolate, Equal Exchange and Theo Chocolate, just to name a few brands).
Beyond romantic treats, I shop for Whole Trade teas, coffees, body care and grocery products throughout the store. Here are a few of my very favorite items: Read the rest of this entry »
Thanks to our Whole Trade Guarantee program, I get to work with a ton of great vendors who are using their businesses in order to change people’s lives. Every day I hear stories that are truly inspiring, and this blog is a place where I get to share it all with you.
As you may remember, The Whole Trade Guarantee is a buying program that brings together a strict set of criteria for products from developing countries. This program guarantees exceptional product quality, more money for producers, better wages and working conditions for workers, sound environmental production practices and the support of poverty eradication through a donation of one percent of product sales to our Whole Planet Foundation.
Continuing our cold weather = tea weather theme, I wanted to spotlight the Choice Organic Teas. Recently Whole Foods Market launched four new tea items from Choice, a new line of full leaf teas, which, if you recall my last post, is one of the hottest trends in the tea category. The tea experts at Choice use hand-picked whole leaf teas, flavorful herbs, and delicate flowers in a biodegradable tea pyramid pouch. The pouch and the pungent tea leaves are the precise combination to create the prefect brew. The new products are a mix of traditional methods and flavors combined with high quality tea.
Dr. Bronner’s Magical Soap was one of the first Whole Body products offered at our original Whole Foods Market store in Austin, Texas in 1980. Over the years Dr. Bronner’s and Whole Foods Market have successfully grown their business in parallel, always committed to caring for the communities and environment around them. Today Dr. Bronner’s and Whole Foods Market have taken great strides towards improving the lives of producers in Third World countries with the fair trade certification of Dr. Bronner’s ingredients and the establishment of the Whole Trade Guarantee.
In shifting their supply chains to certified Fair Trade ingredients, Dr. Bronner’s makes a big difference in the lives of several thousand farmers and workers. Here are a few of their stories.
“Thank you Whole Foods. Thank you for our new class room!”
Those are the words of a song written for Whole Foods Market by students in Ghana Africa. The school was built because Whole Foods Market customers bought Blessing Baskets. Thank you for helping us weave hope into the world one basket at a time!
To see the global chain reaction you helped start, click here.
Note: These great baskets aren’t available in all of our stores. Sorry! Look for them in the Midwest, North Atlantic, Northeast, Rocky Mountain and Florida.
Learn more about The Blessing Basket Project and their mission to pay weavers multiple times more than Fair Trade wages for their baskets — calling it “prosperity wages.” Every basket they sell helps create sustainable jobs and helps reduce poverty in the villages they serve.
Welcome to Whole Story, the official blog of Whole Foods Market.
Don’t know us? In a nutshell, we are the world's leading natural and organic grocer and we’re passionate about healthy food and a healthy planet. Learn more about us.
We’re lucky to have a whole bunch of smart, passionate people doing incredible things in areas like organics, supporting local growers, green practices, fair trade, micro-lending and all kinds of food related stuff. We’ll use this blog to share some of the cool things going on around here.
Of course, what makes this blog really exciting is YOU — so join the conversation!
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