Used to be a great company, but really started going downhill about 8 years ago. It really started when instead of being the leaders in the industry, and we were, we started being the followers and made everyone our competition. We never worried about what the competition would do but then all of a sudden, we did and became hyper focused on being them. We used to have all the new ideas, then the best we had was demo events on Saturdays. The Mid Atlantic lead in the numbers and it used to be they wouldn't accept anything but the best of the best when it came to their Coordinator team, but then they started losing some of those leaders and replaced them with "YES" people. J.O. kept that team at the top of their game but then it fell apart and the team slowly were replaced by lazy talkers rather then hard workers. Standards fell apart. Company fell apart
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I started working at Whole Foods in 2009 in Northern California. The company was making lots of money and my stores were well managed. It was a great place to work. I think things really started falling apart in 2014 when they did 'Data Unification.' It was at that point when we started negative comping. It was a disastrous decision we never really recovered from. From there, management just kept making more and more disastrous decisions that ultimately led to our takeover.
Now, for the past 5-6 years we've been doing 'Store Process,' which is the most assasinine, wasteful, inefficient, and completely ineffective system imaginable. Shrink is high, INF's are high, shelves are empty, stale product is being sold to customers, and nobody in charge seems to care or think there's a problem. The worse the results Store Process delivers, the harder they double down on it. Since it doesn't work, and cannot deliver results, they blame department leadership and team members for its failure. Since the recent reorganization they're going crazy with Store Process. Blaming teams and micromanaging everything and everyone. It's become a work environment where covering your a-s is now the number one priority. Whole Foods used to be a great place to work. Very sad what's happened.
The post below hit the nail on the head. Its all Mackey's ego that helped sink what was a great company to work for. How about those Healthy Eating Clubs he arrogantly shoved in stores that charged a sign up fee, PLUS a monthly fee and charged for certain classes, to anyone that may have wanted to join. BUT, as he would tell you, he wanted these clubs solely to promote healthy eating. LOL. He also imported some quack 'doctor' name Matt to help with that farce. Beginning of the end was when Walter left, sure he has his issues and ego, but he was more business driven, not a egocentric mad scientist. What was once ingenuity and foresight turned into ego and arrogance. That carried down to many of the RPs (and above) who felt they could - and did - whatever they wanted without any fear of discipline. It was a time bo-b ready to explode. This company has fallen so far from it's heyday, it's unrecognizable. Sadly some of us are stuck here.
2005-2008. Opening of a ton of large format stores 60k + sq ft ( all regions required to have them in their new store pipelines ), Health Starts Here initiative and the ridiculous company alternative health program ( no money for improved benefits but tons for healthy eating camps with the idea of promoting veganism for all), Wild Oats acquisition. All products of Mackey hubris. No investment in data infrastructure, lack of accountability for regional presidents, underperforming UK region, lack of 365/Private Label ( revolving door of leadership and products, a Board-of Directors that did not hold JM accountable. Amazon was courted and the ELT was fortunate to get the meetings. There was a hostile stock takeover brewing ( it had been avoided a few other times) esp with continued poor quarterly earnings reports. Amazon deal made the folks at the top wealthy as RPs and ELT held large amounts of stock. Ego, poor leadership and lack of strategy ruined WFM. It was a fun place to work for a long time.
I was in a store meeting ( entire store at 9pm) in 2003 when the gm was making his speech and literally chuckling at how d-mb customers were to pay such high prices…there was no significant competition in the lane n wfm raked it in…with profit margins much much higher then your normal grocery…competition arrived in the form of yer avg grocer offering then expanding its all natural / organic selections…it was over right there… just took a decade to get choked out
I work for Kroger now! If we have a store that does less than 850k a week it will eventually be shut down. 600k lmfao
All fantastic insight into a once leader in the industry- Wild Oats started the nightmare- spending 700M on stores doing 75k a week vs. 600k a week at WFM- It was never run like a business but it was run like a family. The old days were great if you were fortunate enough to have been around- now Amazon builds hundreds of stores on a concept that doesn't work- most of them never opened and they are going to try to open them in a year- while paying dark rent for years- Amazon is not run like a business either so good luck if you are still at WFM.
Amazon buying whole foods was the beginning of the end of what whole foods used to be. Now it's all about micromanagement, which is known to create a toxic work culture.
Mackey was never good a running a business. He got lucky and then never adapted when there was actual competition in the market. He is a libertarian hack who never cared about TM happiness.
I started there in 2005, I became SSI in late 2009, and in 2010 is when Admin TLs were cut. That was the start of the erosion of the admin team. This was back when every store had a PBS, so if you didn't understand benefits, or fmla, or short term disability, there was someone at the store m-f that could actually answer your questions. Accounting was a full time job. Cripes, I had come from cashup in a busy store, on the IBM system, so cashup was a full time job at a large store.
We had ISEs, in store educators, who would give trainings on different depts, so we could get those I Wonder coupons for an extra 20% off of purchases up to $50 in that department. We had demo people, who would cook things to hand out samples to customers, and tell them how to make the meals themselves. Healthy Eating Specialists! Some people would consider these positions a waste, but if you were lucky enough to work with a good demo person, a good ISE, you knew what a loss it was when those positions were wiped out. SSIs were eliminated and replaced with SSSs for price accuracy needs at the store, and some of us went on to become MSIs (now STSSs), who are now being pushed out. Marketing at the store level went away. Now all Marketing outside of CEN is out.
While Amazon absolutely sped along the last few steps of WFM's death as a great retail place to work, things were headed that way anyway. The pandemic just sped up Amazon's plans.
Old WFM was amazing. Each store had a different vibe to it, and that was great. Different art work at each store, but all creative, all cool. I know more than a few signmakers that went to Trader Joes, so I'm glad that sort of art is still being done somewhere in retail.
I was there for 17 years, left last summer. For all of you still there, especially the long-timers, spruce up your resumes, post them on Indeed, and try to get out of there. The amount of stress and anxiety that everyone was feeling the last few years has likely not gone away, and you all deserve to work somewhere that you do not feel like you are suffocating. You have value. I cannot tell you how much my mental health has benefited since I left.
Cowards run this company now. Coward rules and coward policies. To get ahead all you need to know is how to blame others and complain. They'll listen to you all-day and then "help you do your job." We all watch this go on. At least at my store.
Who cares when it went downhill it continues to. Look around your locations all the new employees are a mess, every store had a few questionable people but now its the majority.
Grew too big too fast and it was never a well run company. Mackey & Co. were the beneficiaries of the healthy eating and foodie trends but they were always poor operators. Used to be very good at taking care of employees and had a lot of innovation, but they were extremely arrogant and did nothing as the competition caught up. Completely indifferent to the terrible price perception in the public. Once every other grocer was selling cold pressed juice for a lower cost they were cooked.
They tried to hack and slash labor but then they started losing talent that set them apart. They tried retrofitting universal operating standards into stores specifically designed to be unique. Their distribution and purchasing systems remain a mess.
Amazon is evil but if they hadn't bought Whole Foods I imagine the company would be about dead right now. In a way I suppose it already is. It's just zombie cordyceps Whole Foods shambling into oblivion.
WFM has never been huge! There are less than 600 stores currently. Nothing special!
It was a great company to work for before the Wild Oats buyout. EVERYONE got paid more than other grocery workers. EVERYONE. Mackey had a lot of great ideas and the company really used to care about team members. There was a lot of opportunity to move up and the environment at the time encouraged and embraced new ideas. Those new ideas fostered healthy competition and growth. Gainsharing, team builds, PTO sharing, health plan voting, free health plan after 10 years, voting on of team members, shared fate, ALL AWESOME THINGS - ALL GONE NOW. The Wild Oats buyout meant everything got too big too fast. Wall Street investors loved it but that would later be the biggest kn--e in the back. The FTC fought the merger tooth and nail for a long time. Once things were done and WFM got to take control there was a lot to do. Wild Oats stores were old and poorly run. Leadership at Wild Oats was really bad but they couldn’t just fire everybody right away. Most of the employees were not very good either and it took a few years to cycle through store closings and team member transitions. In the end it was a TON of money spent for really no return. WFM closed most of those stores eventually. A lot of them in the southwest of the country we’re bought by Sprouts which is basically Wild Oats again. Then WFM started building new stores where they shouldn’t have. At the time of the merger WFM was huge. They were big news and Wall Street loved them $42 per share. Within five years competition was growing and we weren’t competing anymore. We made organic popular and everyone else made it cheap. Sales were dropping, stock was falling. Regional presidents started retiring. Everybody smart saw the presidents leaving and started leaving too. Ideas stopped flowing. Wall Street pushed. Mackey sold $14 per share. Now you work for Amazon.
WF never made money. it was sinking before amazon, and that trend hasnt changed at all, the owner just has a lot more money now. This was amazons way of getting its feet wet and learning what works and what doesnt work in retail. apparently everything that WF does .... doesnt work. overpriced gimmicky trash, portraying a BS atmosphere for employees that no one buys into, absolute EPIC amounts of waste in every department : this includes both physical products that just get thrown away and having multiple leaders in a department and having it still function horribly.... These are all things WF did before amazon and is still doing now. WF as a business is a sht show and always was, and now they are paying for it
When John Mackey was buying Wild Oats. He was using his wife's name in reverse and with it making false emails to drive down the stock so he could buy it cheaply.
Wholefoods started going down hill when Walter Robb was put in charge for a while (around 2008). Mackey should have told the Board where to go and not stepped aside. Then when Mackey was pushed to sell he started cutting the good stuff to make us look more profitable to a potential buyer. We bought into his system and he sold us out and sold us literally. I wish the buyer had not been Amazon as well. Besos cares only about money, not people. He really doesn't even care about his customers either. Buy what he puts in the store or don't is his attitude instead of selling what people actually expect to find in WFM. I hope Mackey loses every penny he got in the sale for WFM. He deserves that. I hope Besos bankrupts WFM, he deserves that too.
WFM was declining before Amazon as more competing markets (Wegman’s, Kroger, etc.) began offering many of the same brands at lower prices. The Amazon acquisition actually saved WFM from spiraling at the time. I worked for WFM for over 17 years from CA to SSTL and witnessed firsthand the culture clash that developed when the merger took place. Amazon totally gutted the Core Values that drew me and others to WFM in the first place. Everything special and unique about us like our community involvement, caring for the environment, knowledgeable service, and our passion for selling the highest quality food went out the window. Amazon got rid of our store artists and made every store the exact same. It’s basically Wal-Mart now with empty shelves, dirty stores, less product options. Heartless Automated scheduling plus impossible sales and efficiency metrics destroyed any semblance of caring for TM’s growth and happiness. It shouldn’t even say Whole Foods on the sign. It’s just a dystopian sh-t-hole now. Glad I finally quit, but I miss how truly special it once was.