Hoping to get some insights about the recent Whole Foods hubbub, I called General Manager Dan Gillotte of Wheatsville Co-op in Austin, Texas.
Wheatsville is like a scurrying rodent/mammal in the Age of Dinosaurs, whose life-strategy is dodging the bigger competition of HEB's City Market and Whole Foods' flagship store (and corporate headquarters) in Austin. If anyone knows what it's like to deal with Whole Foods, it's Wheatsville and Mr. Gillotte.
It's also a glowing testament to Austin that little Wheatsville Co-op stays afloatand even expands in this economy, and this level of corporate competition. A year-long store renovation project comes to a close this weekend, with Wheatsville celebrating its new space (adding 3300 square feet of sales floor; offices, breakroom; cheese island; deli food bar, etc) with a great big bash in the parking lot. Plus, sales are up 13% this month over August 2008.
"We're doing good," Gillotte told me with a note of pride in his voice. "We're doing real good."
I called Gillotte because (a) Wheatsville was my grocery store when I lived in Austin over 14 years ago (I also worked there) and (b) I figured Gillotte had heard about John Mackey's ill-starred editorial in the Wall Street Journal and might have some insights about the situation.
"I've been following it today, yes," Gillote said, amused.
I was curious if co-ops like Wheatsville might relish the opportunity to make a case for health care reform and play for the Whole Foods customer, in light of Mackey's comments.
"It's tough because I don't want to bad mouth competition," Gillotte said, measuring his words. "But [John Mackey] probably wishes he had kept his opinions to himself now."
Hrm. Not exactly what I was going for. Certainly Gillotte would want to show that Wheastville is a great liberal option for democrats put-off by Mackey's conservative/libertarian opinions? Aren't grocery co-ops just hotbeds of radical leftism, after all?
"If you think about it, co-ops are actually more 'conservative' [than corporations] but in a good way," Gillotte said. "We answer to our members, so we can't just pack up shop and, poof, move somewhere else. We're not going to change what we sell just because it's more profitable. And we're certainly not going to say what's best for our customers and owners."
Ultimately, that was Mackey's miscalculation here. Intentionally or not, Whole Foods created an atmosphere that seemed to support its lefty shoppers' politics and activism, but when it turned out that the CEO held a right wing point of view, those same customers felt betrayed by a business leader who, in some ways, was speaking for them. As one Whole Foods shopper put it in a parting letter to Whole Foods,
"When you use the power of [your] platform (that is based on what your customer base has supported, through our choice to shop with you) to issue your opinion on the current health insurance reform debate, you are able to do so in a high-profile publication like the WSJ, and expect it to receive a lot of attention. I say all this in the hopes that you understand that [my] hesitation to continue to shop at Whole Foods is not a knee-jerk response, or one that I take lightly. "
In other words, your customers gave you that platform, and this is how you repay us? Well, you don't speak for me.
This is a fundamental difference between co-ops and massive chains like Whole Foods whose CEO's rarely come into contact with customers. The general managers of co-ops answer to members and see them in their stores every day. Because of that, managers of small, independnet stores like Wheatsville probably aren't as likely to speak for shoppers the way Mackey used his platform on behalf of his entire corporation.
"We aren't going to purport to speak for our owners on very personal issues like health care reform," Gillotte said. "We don't get to decide for people what's best. For example, I'm a vegan, but Wheatsville still sells meat. We have to think about the whole of our constituency."
As for Mackey, Gillotte went on to say that he was surprised Whole Foods censored its blog, moving negative comments to a different forum and apparently deleting certain posts.
"That's so non-transparent," Gillotte said. He added that it was a rather "old fashioned" way of dealing with internet dissent. "Don't scrub your website. Counteract misperceptions with truth."
That works in co-ops where transparency and discussion are highly valued, of course. It might not work so well if Mackey's brand of truth just throws oil on the fire that he started.
Cross-posted from Fair Food Fight