Social Networking

Forget all about John Galt. Just who is John Mackey?

A former student of philosophy and religion at the University of Texas at Austin in the late 1970s. A vegetarian. A vegan. Or an ovo vegetarian, because the man likes eggs.

He does yoga. He reads. He participates in two monthly book clubs. He gives away up to $1 million a year to welfare groups and other charities.

He turned a health food store called Safer Way, which he started in his garage, into the first vegetarian supermarket in the great meat-eating Republic of Texas. He ran a health food restaurant.

And just as Ronald W. Reagan was preparing to enter the White House, he merged Safer Way with another natural foods store to become a little entity known as Whole Foods Market. Since then, Whole Foods Market has become one of the most widely-recognized brands associated with “lifestyle shopping”; that is, customers shop there and don’t mind paying an extra premium to do so because they like the sort of values espoused by the store. Think Starbucks when it comes to coffee, or Ben & Jerry’s when it comes to ice cream. But what those companies are to their customers is a pittance to what Whole Foods Markets is to their customers because food, glorious food, is the very epicenter of a typical Whole Foods Markets’ customer’s lifestyle: natural, organic, sustainable, involved, caring, progressive . . .

Wait a minute—we might want to hold off on that last one.

For progressive, left-leaning Whole Foods Market shoppers, Wednesday, August 12, 2009, will go down as the day the music died. For that’s the day that John Mackey, CEO of the crunchiest supermarket chain of all time, came out against President Barack Obama’s health care plan in the Wall Street Journal, and exposed himself as a—collective gasp—free-market libertarian. And with an eight-point rebuttal championing such liberal heresies as tort reform, free market solutions, deregulation, and tax equity, Mackey let President Obama’s proposed health care plan have it with both barrels, and a Bowie knife in the gut to boot. Even Mackey’s opening quote, from Margaret Thatcher, no less, seemed hell-bent on tweaking the liberals: “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

The great irony of the American left is that they stand for diversity and inclusion . . . but only for those who agree with them already. Not long after Mackey’s op-ed hit the streets, the forums on Whole Food Market’s website exploded in anti-Mackey tirades. A few thread titles: “John Mackey’s WSJ editorial harpoons health reform.” “Boycotters . . . where do YOU work?” “Sad Sad day.” “Mackey Inserts Foot in Mouth.” “Hypocritical Whole Foods.” Seems like a whole bunch of Whole Foods Markets customers believe that living a natural, organic, sustainable, involved, caring, lifestyle is only the purview of political “progressives.” Anyone else touting the line is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, track record or no track record.

But here’s all you need to know about John Mackey: he has the courage of his convictions. In this day and age, where the deep, dark, unknowable internet can break you as fast as it can make you, it takes real nerve to take a stance and make that stance public, knowing full well it could destroy you—at least financially. And in this instance, Mackey is playing with fire. Let’s face it: Whole Foods Markets is expensive—far more expensive than other supermarkets who care not a whit about sustainability, organic farming, or any of that sort of thing. Whole Foods Market’s business plan, in fact, pretty much has to rely on the sort of brand loyalty that typically drives retail products like luxury cars or designer clothes: customers have to believe they’re buying into something bigger than just a product in order to spend that extra delta, especially on a regular basis.

Will this be a MotrinMoms moment for Mackey and Whole Foods Market?

Let’s hope not. The business world needs more people of true courage and conviction like John Mackey.

By Robert Pothier