Adding Light Spotlight (09/12/2012)

The Adding Light Spotlight highlights people or organizations working to make our communities stronger, more resilient, and safer for our improved quality of life. Through the Spotlight, I hope to demonstrate that EVERYONE does not have to do EVERYTHING to make our world better as long as EVERYONE does SOMETHING.

I have often heard that if half the people complain you have sold out, and half the people complain that you are too idealistic, then you are probably doing pretty good. That is how I feel about Whole Foods Market. Although I believe strongly in buying local wherever possible, and luckily my neighborhood has a high quality, family-owned grocery about a mile-and-a-half from my house, my family and I still shop at Whole Foods because I appreciate what they have done for the marketplace for quality food, and because we can find some of our monthly purchases only at Whole Foods Market.

You can read the Whole Foods Market history on their website, as well as their list of unacceptable ingredients in foods they sell. Even though some have suggested they do not take a hard enough line on genetically modified foods (GMOs), they have taken great strides to keep their customers informed about what is in the food they sell.

Which leads me to the two reasons I feature them in The Spotlight this week: they truly care about keeping the customer informed about what they are really purchasing in their stores, and they are upfront with their customers about what they should expect from their shopping experience. The best example of how they keep customers informed comes from their meat department. Whole Foods partnered with Global Animal Partnership to use their 5-Step (TM) Animal Welfare Rating Standard to let customers know how their meat got from farm to the customer's table.

I would love if our local store would do this as well....at least to let me know so that I can make an informed choice as a consumer. I have no delusion that pasture-raised beef will make huge in-roads to the southside market, but should it ever get there, I want to know as certainly as I can.

I do not have enough insider information to know to what level Whole Foods might be hypocritical to its socially conscious values (see here and here if you want to research further). I certainly know that they have similar labor issues as other large chain retailers, and that they have been staunchly anti-union (and have the resulting high turnover that comes with it). Amidst all that, what strikes me is that they try. They view their customers and employees as stakeholders. They do not pretend to be a benefit corporation without profit motive. They run their company like any other publicly traded company working for the benefit of their investors....with one difference, they have made as their core product a higher quality food supply. They almost single-handedly established the market for organic food (a position I for one wish they would stay out of the labeling of and stick to the selling of), have educated a whole generation of foodies, and continue to push the envelope in terms of informing the customer.

All in all, I would love for Whole Foods to tighten up its practices to be 100% in compliance with their values, and certainly for them to get better with their labor issues...but as long as they provide a product that I can trust more than others, and as long as they continue to have a selection that respects a variety of food choices, I will continue to do some of my shopping there.