Are Supermarkets PR Teams More Suspicious Than CIA Agents Living in Afghanistan?
Whole Foods, like most supermarkets, has a policy of not talking to trade publications. Clearly there’s a good reason for this. Slow-margin industries need to maintain their proprietary advantages as much as possible. In addition, you can save your corporate communications peeps a lot of work if you only return phone calls to the folks […]
SEC Says Mackey Online Escapades Are No Big Deal, We Agree
SEC Says Mackey Online Escapades Are No Big Deal, We Agree Time to prosecute the real corporate criminals, don’t you think.http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2008/04/25/afx4936330.html http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/19/BUGNPR2QFA1.DTL
Whole Foods Expansion And Wild Oats Transformations—A Slow Road Ahead
More and more, we’re hearing bits of news that suggest the post-Wild Oats merger has presented even more obstacles than we expected. While overall market opportunity remains huge, a lot of the challenge has to do with the fact that, notwithstanding some terrific management, Whole Foods might have too many balls in the air. The […]
Department of Justice Approves Sirius Merger, Leaving Us Wondering More About Scrutiny over Whole Foods Purchase of Wild Oats
Regular readers know that we were a bit confused about why the seemingly merger-happy Federal Trade Commission deemed Whole Foods’ purchase of Wild Oats as anti-competitive. It just didn’t make sense. Even if you believe, like we do, that the government should be more involved in the regulation of mergers, this one left us scratching our […]
Think Bar at Expo West
As regular readers, know we’re a bit hard-headed when it comes to reporting on our suddenly hot and trendy industry. After all, to those of us who have spent decades trying to create a sustainable economy, the LOOK MA OUR COMPANY MADE A SOLAR WAREHOUSE or HEY WE BUY WIND POWER sort of marketing makes […]
LA Times on Whole Foods Pasadena
We’ve come to realize that the mainstream media is usually so wowed by Whole Foods that, most of the time, it seems their critical faculties are left at the door when they write about the store. We can understand. If you’re used to shopping at a drab and dull supermarket (meaning nearly all of them), […]
Whole Foods Closing in Gresham, Oregon Points Out the Magic of Its Touch on Real Estate
While we’ve been very clear on the fact that many Wild Oats stores were never that successful, and that WFM would be closing a significant number of them, a recent story in the local Gresham Outlook reminded us that store closings aren’t that different from factory closings. In other words, it hurts the locals in a lot […]
Westport Whole Foods Shoppers Remind Us How Much Wild Oats Missed the Mark
Two weeks ago, we spent a few hours in the Westport Whole Foods Market that was formerly Wild Oats. Actually, it used be a terrific independent store that was then bought by distributor United Natural Food’s NRG retail group . Wild Oats bought it from UNFI and when the Safeway right next door closed, they knocked down […]
Whole Foods Revitalizes Former Westport Wild Oats in Connecticut’s Gold Coast
Regular readers know that one of NBN’s favorite pastimes used to be reporting on Wild Oats in areas where they were competing head to head with Whole Foods. Louisville, West Hartford , and a few others showed what everybody knew, namely that Wild Oats may have had heart, but the rest of the formula for […]
Whole Foods Market Shareholders Give Mackey Big Thumbs Up
As reported Sunday a dissident group of Whole Foods shareholders was fighting hard to have company Chairman and CEO John Mackey relinquish one of this two leadership roles. Yet as reported in the Austin American-Statesman,stockholders affirmed Mackey’s role and rejected the proposal 73% to 27 %. Buttons spouting Mackey’s face surrounded by the phrases “Can’t Argue with Success” […]