Oh absolutely, and they’re perfectly welcome to do that. I don’t have any problems with right or left-wing boycotts. People buy what they choose to buy for whatever reasons. I don’t eat Ben & Jerry’s either, but for me, it’s because I’m diabetic and so doesn’t involve politics.
People make choices based on information (or ignorance, or health, or proximity or whatever). I mainly started the OP to let those who might be interested in knowing know what this guy wrote in the Fox “News” of the editorial world, the Wall Street Journal.
And Roland, I didn’t know he was a Libertarian when I started the thread. I should have done more research. I knee-jerked because of his use of the right-wing meme “ObamaCare.” Either way, he’s a dick.
On preview, whoo, we’re in the Pit now? Well then fuck him with organic celery!
Sure, the difference however is brand image. Ben and Jerrys (now a Unilever company - which HAS changed things) has a hippie granola crunching eco friendly liberal image. While I’m sure there are conservatives that can’t get enough Chunky Monkey or Cherry Garcia - their charitible and political contributions lists were never at odds with the brand image - and their corporate executives haven’t really made a lot of public statements at odds with brand image.
The the with John Mackay is that his customer base tends to be somewhat to the left of Ben and Jerry’s - and he’s crafted a brand image to cater to this. I’m not sure that Whole Foods - between its ‘organic free range’ product list and its expensive prices and its urban locations - is a company that is going to work with a different customer base - if he pisses this one off too much, he won’t have a company.
And his timing is poor. It used to be that there were only a few places you could get organic food. That market has really changed in the past ten years. Mainline grocery stores carry more organics (although the economic downturn has reduced the selection at a lot of the stores I shop at), farmers markets are bigger than ever. Whole Foods has contributed to the reduction in the number of small health food groceries through acquisition - but at the same time they’ve helped get an industry of industrial organics off the ground - when General Mills sells organic foods into your local Kroger, its gone mainstream. He’s got more competition now, and at a far more competitive level than a little 600 sq ft co-op, than he has had before.
You can say what you want. I can say you have to stop. Then, you in turn can ignore me and keep talking or call me an idiot.
I don’t shop at Whole Foods. I shop at Ralph’s. It’s close by, convenient, and good enough. I have no idea what their CEO or Board thinks. IF they had a statement that I found to be horrifying and disgusting, if their meat counter was really Soylent Green, or something, if they had a live kitten tank next to the lobster tank, I might decide to shop somewhere else.
Does anyone have any real statistics on how liberal/conservative Whole Foods customers are? No, I don’t want your offhand opinions on this matter. I want real statistics on this issue. It’s not clear to me that there is any reason to be sure that they are liberal in general. There are a lot of conservative people who endorse some of the crunchy-granola ideas that are sometimes thought of as liberal. They may eat organic food, shop at farmer’s markets, eat “healthy” foods (whatever that means), and may even dress like aging hippies. They vote conservative though, and in their economic and social beliefs they are conservative.
Furthermore, it looks to me that there isn’t much difference between the customers at the nearest Whole Foods store to me and the ones at my nearest supermarket (which is a Giant). The customers at the Whole Foods aren’t remotely the aging hippies that supposedly are the only ones who shop there. They are a rather racially and economically diverse group. I just don’t see any huge difference between Whole Foods and Giant customers.
I think the point you make is good, but I think demanding that other people supply your statistics for you is sort of, well, lazy. If you want stats, look them up.
Yep. It’s not at all atypical for company officers to pay themselves low salaries, and take the bulk of their earnings through bonuses. That’s what I did when I was the CEO of a corporation. It wasn’t $1, or anything. More like $12,000. Then I took out quarterly bonuses. The $1 shit is just for show.
Do you know anything about my posts in general? I have supplied statistics for other people many times here on the SDMB. In fact, supplying statistics or more precise facts for other people is basically what all my posting at the SDMB has been all about. I rarely participate in threads where the only point is to offer opinions about a subject. I spent quite a while before posting in this thread doing a search that looked for statistics about the political beliefs of Whole Foods before giving up and asking if other posters could find such statistics. I did so because I hoped that other people may be able to find such statistics even though I can’t. After all, frequently I’ve been able to find statistics about a question asked here when the OP can’t find them. I was hoping that other posters might be able to find them when I can’t.
Yeah, That’s what I was thinking. From What I can tell, with their prices, their customer base seemed to largely be rich SUV driving soccer moms from the money suburbs. I doubt those types are overwhelmingly liberals.
I had them when I did my case study on them about two years ago - but I paid for them for the single use of a case study. (I couldn’t find them for free either). At that point in time Whole Foods shoppers were overwhelmingly self identified liberals.
Yeah, it was a pretty cogent editorial, though of course given his customer base, it may not have been the best PR move.
There used to be a pair of websites, buyblue.com and buyred.com, where you could see which corporations donated to which parties and buy accordingly. Unfortunately both seem to have gone defunct.
Alas, Dangerosa, you may be right about any possibility of answering my question. On one hand, of course Whole Foods knows about the politics of their customers. All big companies do research into finding out what their customers are like. They do surveys on the income level, sex, race, political opinions, and many other things about their customers. Unfortunately, they consider this information to be proprietary information, so there’s no way for most people to access it.
I accessed it through a for fee market research firm - I can’t even remember the name of the firm - but it was sort of a Gartner for Marketing. Companies other than Whole Foods are interested in the demographics of Whole Foods and pay for that research as well (as are industry analysts). And some market research companies run such studies on spec, and then just charge you to get the data. But I don’t know that much of that data is available publicly for free. I couldn’t find it for free.
He is entitled to his opinion. I can shop where I want. There is an Italian Restaurant that I used to go to. He plastered his place with Bush stickers and righty handouts on a table. I have not been back since. He expressed himself and I responded. There are other restaurants I can go to. Food at a Bush backers restaurant does not taste as good.
Duke was pointing out the effectiveness of the sit ins in ending segregated eating places. Although Houston was integrated partly because forward thinking businessmen (of course they were all men back then) were willing to work with civil rights activists. They didn’t want Houston to look like one of the Deep South strongholds all over the news back then, turning police dogs & firehoses on demonstrators.
It’s been pretty well known in Texas that Whole Foods is run by a flint-hearted multimillionaire Union-hating Libertarian asshole. Quite the standard-bearer for The New Austin. It’s a fine place to work for a couple of years if you’re a tattooed, pierced kid who doesn’t mind having shitty insurance & little chance for advancement–as long as he doesn’t have to wear a uniform. Now the whole country knows.
I’ll continue being a somewhat-thoughtful omnivore. Encouraging “regular” grocery chains that sell good stuff by buying from them. Hitting the occasional Farmers’ Market–Houston has several upscale options & the regular-scale market is in my neighborhood. And visiting Central Market when I’m feeling fancy.
I don’t know that I’ll “boycott” Whole Foods. But my rare visits will become even rarer.
And what I think is hilarious is that Whole Foods has pretty much been a model of a societally responsible company that treats its employees extremely well. It was a darling of the left for the healthy foods it sold, it’s strong preference for local growers, and (here in SF anyway), it’s embracing of gays. I think the store I go to must have like 75% gay employees. But now when the person who knows what it takes to make a company like that work comments on health care, sharing his real-world experience as CEO, he becomes the enemy of the left. It’s almost as if the left detests ideas that actually work.
To all those liberals who will no longer avail themselves of the Whole Food offering due to the CEO’s OpEd, specifically, I ask, which ideas in the OP do you find so disturbing? It seems to me that he wants to arrive at much the same place through an avenue that he thinks is more fiscally responsible. Which of his eight ideas make you bristle?
