Whole Foods: John Mackey's Five Core Values

Whole Foods was founded by John Mackey in 1980 and since then, it has evolved into the world’s largest retail chain of natural and organic food supermarkets. It was an instant success because of an ability to carry far more organic and natural items than any rival, and its rapid growth is primarily due to being dedicated quality standards and core values. It was reflected in the company’s mission to “promote the vitality and well-being of all individuals by supplying the highest quality, most wholesome foods available.” Alongside with its mission, Mackey created five core values for the company. First, “sell the highest quality natural and organic products available.” Second, “satisfy and delight customers” as customers were declared the company’s

most important stakeholder and the motivation for the business. Third, “support team member excellence and happiness” included providing fair wages and benefits, building trust between team members, and valuing diversity. Fourth, “create wealth through profits and growths.” Fifth, “support communities and encourage local involvement.”
Whole Foods has two key strategies that has been successful.

First, increased its competitive market by acquiring competitor such as Wild Oats, which was the second largest natural foods supermarket in the nation and it had 193 stores. It eliminates the competition and allows for more locations where Whole Foods was not available. It is a huge possibility for growth on Whole Foods Vision of expanding and being dominant in the market. Second, build its brand equity with organics through marketing so when consumers think “Organic”, they think “Whole Foods.” Also, the company involves in the community to help extend the market through the social mission. Based on the motto, “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet,” its social mission is donating 5% of after-tax profits to nonprofit organization, supporting sustainable agriculture, reducing waste, and encouraging environmentally friendly store maintenance programs. One of the example of Whole Foods’ efforts in promote sustainable agriculture and protect farm worker and the environment is Local Producer Loan Program. This program provides loans to small, local producers who sell their products to Whole Foods and need the loans to continue their

operation.
However, Whole Foods faced with challenges of embracing growth along with maintaining this social mission.

First, addressing perceived authenticity of social mission in a changing marketplace. In a book called The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan, criticized Whole Foods and business like it to task for contributing the rise of industrial organic farms. As Whole Foods purchased from natural foods farming giants and he accused the company of ignoring the local focused, sustainable values that it supposedly acclaimed. Second, focus on suitable acquisition candidates to continue upwards growth trend. As it was said earlier that its strategy to increase its competitive market by acquiring Wild Oats, it faced a challenge from FTC (Federal Trade Commission) who was trying to stop the acquisition, fearful of the organic supermarket industry being monopolized by Whole Foods. Despite its challenges, I think it is possible in scale and profits and stay true to a social mission. According to Mackey, he saw a synergy from this tension and he called it “conscious capitalism” where this system as based on the pursuit of a deeper purpose beyond making profits. The best way to maximize profits is to not make them a primary goal of a business and I believe that the most successful businesses is to put customer

first.