John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods Market, is one of the most consequential American entrepreneurs of our time.
Whole Foods began in 1980 as a small hippie health food store in Austin, Texas. Under Mackey’s leadership, it grew into the largest organic foods supermarket chain in the United States, selling to Amazon in 2017 for nearly $14 billion. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the company revolutionized the food industry, mainstreaming health-consciousness for a mass market.
Despite the company’s crunchy progressive brand, Mackey is a staunch capitalist and a steadfast defender of free markets. He popularized the term “conscious capitalism,” which marries capitalism and social responsibility, and and emphasizesinges the role of businesses in creating a sustainable and ethical impact on society at large.
Today, a conversation about what it takes to build a company like Whole Foods, what it is like to have enormous wealth, the role of unions in the American economy, and why he kicked his own father off the board of the company.
And to read Mackey’s full story, check out his new book, The Whole Story.
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Did anyone catch the books he recommended? I think one was by Steven Pinker but maybe I heard incorrectly
Mackey is a businessman first. He realized early on that by selling so called organic/good stuff IE its better for you (this is the marketing angle, Facts are irrelevant) HE could double/triple his sales per SQ Ft of floor space, This is the key metric in the grocery store business. There is no limits to what can be sold in terms of items But there is a finite amount of physical space in a grocery store and they measure their fiscal performance on $ sold per SQ FT. So Mackey was smart enough to know that be going down this high price premium product that they all claim to be superior he could improve the financial performance of his company. that is why the organic's natural foods are pushed at the grocery store level. If I can take my sales from $500/sq. ft. to $3000/SQ Ft and I make my same 2% of gross I will vastly improve my bottom line. IE if your customer wants a purple cow sell them the purple cow just get paid more for it. He is did not go this route to provide healthier safer foods. He did it to make more money than a conventional grocery store.