Boycott Whole Foods?
Wed, Oct 21, 2009
Author: Joshua Levin (33 Articles)
Joshua Levin is a consultant to non-profits and their corporate partners in sustainable agriculture business development and sustainable food markets. Joshua holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business, where he was a Catherine B. Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship, and a BA from Harvard University. He lives with his wife in Brooklyn, NY.
In case you’ve had your head in the sand, there is an international boycott being staged against Whole Foods Markets. It started on August 11th, when founder and CEO John Mackey wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal criticizing what he calls “ObamaCare.” It opened with Margaret Thatcher’s wry quote: “The problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people’s money,” before moving on to put forward eight libertarian “alternative proposals” to the Health Care bill that echo the right-wing backlash to health care reform.
In addition to the outpouring of snarky editorialists criticizing so-called “arugula activism,” the anti-Whole Foods movement spawned an outcry that began on the internet that began on social networks like Twitter (www.twitter.com), Facebook (The “Boycott Whole Foods” Facebook group is over 32,000 members strong), and even Whole Foods own discussion board!
Since then, the boycott has escalated to picketing, which began in Britain (Mackey makes a special point to poke the British and Canadian health care systems, despite their differences from Obama’s plan), and has since spread to the United States. Last Wednesday’s opening of a new Whole Foods Market on the Upper West Side of Manhattan was accompanied by 50 picketers.
Whole Foods has tried to distance itself from the editorial, saying the opinions of Mackey do not represent the company, and several well-respected food activists have supported the stance that regardless of Mackey’s opinions, Whole Foods is famed for great employee benefits, salaries, and working conditions, not to mention good food. Michael Pollan, In this micro-interview with GOOD Magazine states:
“So Mackey is wrong on health care, but Whole Foods is often right about food, and their support for the farmers matters more to me than the political views of their founder. I haven’t examined the political views of all the retailers who feed me, but I can imagine having a lot of eating problems if I make them a litmus test.”
My opinion? I think the boycott is in part just a catalyst for expressing one’s convictions about health care reform. It is also driven by pent up frustration (or is it self-loathing?) with the prices people pay at Whole Foods, and their seeming hegemony of the high-end, liberal retail channel. Perhaps it’s just an easy target.
I have great respect for John Mackey, and I had the pleasure of introducing him at NYU last year and having lunch together. Yet he is an avid libertarian, and my guess is that despite the professional discomfort created by this affair, he is feeling further vindicated (as well as further alienated by) the displays of what he probably sees as herdish left-wing hysteria in reaction to his individual thought.
Mackey is no stranger to the fact that political ideas are a dimension of consumer choice. Whole Foods proved and mastered this psychology, and as a result is the most profitable grocery chain in the world. So all I have to say about the boycott is: the market has spoken.
Are you boycotting Whole Foods, or perhaps joining in with the “buycott” – those who have started buying at Whole Foods specifically to counter the boycotters? Do you think the boycotting is justified?
I decided to join the Whole Foods boycott early on. Mackey’s comments so angered me that I didn’t want to hand over my money to him any more. Sure, lots of places I do business with have owners with political views that are very different from my own and I continue to do business with them. But none of them are out there publicly lobbying against the policies that many of their customers hold dear.
I also find Michael Pollan’s implied argument that the boycott will somehow hurt farmers to be fallacious. My refusal to spend money at Whole Foods has forced me to find other venues for similar products. I am spending more money directly with farmers now than I ever did. It’s less convenient but well worth the extra effort.
I may go back to Whole Foods once a health care bill has been passed but not until then. And now that I’ve found new channels for many of the same products, I doubt that I’ll ever be spending the same kind of money there that I used to.
If grocery markets were regulated the same way that health care is today, we would all have a choice of 2 or 3 grocery outlets depending on the state we live in, and Whole Foods probably would not exist. You would get to choose between Safeway, Kroger’s and… There would be no food co-ops, no independent producers, and everything you eat would come through channels and processes approved by your state bureaucracy.
And a bunch of idiots who didn’t like the situation would be pushing for MORE control by the FEDERAL government as the fix. That’s like saying if some alcohol makes you unpleasantly drunk, then more will make you sober and feeling fine. News flash: “Hair of the Dog” doesn’t work.
Whole Foods is a perfect example of a company that delivers innovative products and business practices, including health care, in response to market demand. Don’t forget, in a competitive employment environment, benefits programs are subject to “market” demands on the part or current potential employees.
Unthinking fealty to Democrat party politics notwithstanding, I’m surprised that people who write and read a website like this don’t display more common sense.