Thursday, August 27, 2009
Restaurants Unions enlist in Whole Foods boycott
Posted by Cliff Bostock @cliffbostock on Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 5:00 PM
The Huffington Post reports that two unions are encouraging their six million workers to join the Whole Foods boycott:
Now the Change To Win Investment Group and United Food And Commercial Workers Union -- both a part of the Change To Win federation of unions representing six million workers -- have put out statements criticizing Mackey and encouraging a boycott of the store.CtW called for Mackey's removal as chairman of the board and CEO. "Mr. Mackey attempted to capitalize on the brand reputation of Whole Foods to champion his personal political views, but has instead deeply offended a key segment of Whole Foods consumer base," the group's executive director Bill Patterson said in a statement. UFCW has begun handing out pamphlets to Whole Food shoppers. The group said Mackey's op-ed was an "attempt to undermine Obama's health-care reform." (Whole Foods is not unionized.)
Meanwhile, Whole Foods' brand perception appears to be taking a serious hit. Below is the "reputation chart" from YouGov. The brand's reputation has fallen from 33.3 on Aug. 12 to 20.3 by Aug. 20. I'm not sure how much this research can be trusted. It's all conducted among members of the YouGov site.
Lots of bloggers are waiting for Michael Pollan, who wrote negatively about the grocery chain in The Omnivore's Dilemma, to take a stand on the issue. I'm betting he stays quiet. You may remember that he engaged in a public conversation at Berkeley with CEO John Mackey a couple of years ago. Pollan then acknowledged Mackey's courage in appearing before an audience of foodie activists.
Comments (3)
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these people's time could be put to much better use that this.... besides, the guy threw out some viable alternatives - i guess it's abhorrent to actually propose different ideas nowadays.
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Maybe he should embrace socialism and let the government run his grocery chain. If you think the Fuji apples are mediocre there now - just wait until the government runs it. Since you embrace government run health care, I assume you get all of your health care from Grady and it's associated clinics. If not you should start now to live what you preach.
Let's not forget that Mackey's the guy who posted frequent criticisms of a rival company using an alias on Yahoo Financial to drive down the stock price of that company prior to a purchase by Whole Foods. I'm thinking his editorial was less an attempt to champion his personal political views and more of a greedy effort to improve his company's bottom line.
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