Austinist: SEC Investigating Purported Cuteness of Whole Foods CEO's Haircut

guest

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 21:55:28 -0600

i like whole foods. as a matter of fact, i fucking love the place. i'm neither pretentious nor literally involved with, related to, or posing as anyone who works there or has any stock in the place. i'm a single working professional who likes to eat well and healthy, and frankly - whole foods is perfect - especially the one in downtown austin. what strikes me as odd is how people complain about it. if you don't like it, just don't shop there. that said, the ceo's actions were retarded and questionable. he should go, for no other reason than how cheesy it was... david downtown austin, tx

Ryan

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 18:26:57 -0600

Wow, thanks for the attack, #24 and Scooby. Okay, I admit it, I didn't know Sun Harvest was Wild Oats - probably because I haven't been there in the last 5 years. Thanks for the tip. Scooby, sorry for not defining my terms (I would have, but #21 beat me to it). As for my smug attitude, I was responding to #17 who claimed integrity for whole foods. Sorry, but I do think csa's (community supported agriculture!!), the farmers markets' around town, and Wheatsville, too for that matter) have more integrity than whole foods. If that opinion means I'm smug - guilty as charged! Also, lately csa's are not that hard to get into from my experience, and you can start now and pay ratably for the rest of the season in most cases. Here's a list for Austin: http://www.crudeawakening.org/go_local.htm And also if you can manage to go to a farmers market, many of the farmers there have csa's and are happy to tell you about them in person.

Scooby

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:21:22 -0600

We have Sun Harvest, which is owned by Wild Oats. They're like Whole Paycheck, with the natural foods and premium pricing, but without the clean stores, bountiful selection, and financial success. I was seriously curious about what a csa was. I'm glad the faceless guest stepped to the plate and provided the information. It sounds like a great way for a person to get fresh locally-grown in-season produce without having to have a garden (next to impossible for multifamily housing dwellers) or working around the schedule of the farmers markets. I guess for the rest of a persons diet, the only choice with "integrity" is a co-op like Wheatsville. All of the other choices are either plain old supermarkets with non-organic food and all of the good, old corporate exploitation of the worker and farmer or exploitative union-busting natural food stores. Next time, it might be helpful to actually provide the information instead of cryptic abbreviations, and keep the smug attitude to yourself (your food with "integrity").

guest

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:07:39 -0600

Ryan, where you from? There's all of FOUR now-Wild-Oats in Texas. Yep, your friendly Sun Harvest has been keeping a secret from you all this time....Probably a government conspiracy disguised as ignorance(those are the most effective).

Ryan

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 15:33:21 -0600

Thanks guest #21. Scooby, I honestly don't care where you shop, I just like to provide information. Well, that and eat shit-covered veggies (yum!). Thanks for the info on wild-oats, though. Since we don't have one here, I never bothered to check up on them.

rahodeb

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:13:41 -0600

Gosh. I love people who think we're different from WalMart. I mean, we totally are. We have much better marketing and higher prices, so... But really. We are better. And you can be as self righteous as you want if you buy at WF. It says so right on the receipt, "rub this in other people's faces and be really smug that you're better than poor people. That's the problem with the Wild Oats shoppers, they're too poor. We need to get in there and teach em what it's like to help the environment and planet with our our inflated attitudes.

guest

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:11:36 -0600

A CSA is community supported agriculture, where the consumer purchases a subscription from a local farm and receives a box of produce every week or two (depending on the subscription). most of the local CSA's run from jan/feb-september and often have a waiting list. you also get what they give you, so yes, you may still want to supplement with trips to the farmer's market or grocery store.

Scooby

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:04:42 -0600

Not that I care, but Wild Oats isn't any better from a union-busting perspective, according to: http://www.iww.org/en/node/828 Maybe management would fit right in at Whole Foods. What is a csa? What if I would prefer to not eat 100% local food (variety is the spice of life)? What if I don't care about "integrity" in my food as much as "not still flecked with the shit used as fertilizer" (I know... there's worse stuff than shit on the non-organic food)? What if I want a tomato on Thursday, but didn't burn $5 worth of gas to drive through rush-hour traffic to the Triangle for the Farmers Market the day before? What do I do?

Kristina B

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:03:20 -0600

It is kind of hard not to think that anyone posting as "guest" here is Mackey!! Anyway, embarrassing, yeah. SEC violation? Nah.

Ryan

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:37:15 -0600

rahodeb, is that you? If anyone wants 100% local food with integrity I recommend one of the MANY csa's around town, or the Farmers Markets held Wednesdays and Saturdays. If you want to learn how much integrity Whole Foods has with regards to union-busting, I recommend reading this article: http://www.alternet.org/story/2980/ and also Michael Bluejay's collection: http://michaelbluejay.com/main/wholefoods.html

guest

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:11:07 -0600

For all of you who complain about Whole Food's prices, that money is going towards food with more integrity than the corn-syrup processed cheap crap found at Wal-mart for bottom dollar. You get what you pay for. There's no arguing that their prices are high, but it's worth it for me to buy food with integrity, support local products, renewable energy, donations to charity and other responsible acts. Whole Foods as a store is setting examples for other corporations to follow suit. I think Mackey's postings were a bad idea, and a mistake, but they weren't illegal and I don't see them affecting stock prices.

guest

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 10:11:04 -0600

I believe the comments made in reference to Wild Oats were made several years ago, not during the recent acquisition attempt. In any case, it's hard to argue that posting on Yahoo with a fake name would affect the stock price or anything else. If no one knew that it was Mackey, then it was just another guy mouthing off. I think it's too bad that everyone is focusing on this message board thing as if it were significant instead of just mildly embarassing. We should be focusing on why the FTC is trying to block a perfectly reasonable merger. I don't know if you've been to a Wild Oats store lately, but they could use some WFM spiffiness.

Scooby

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 08:48:55 -0600

Yahoo stock message boards have about as much credibility as the local public restroom wall grafitti. I don't see how the SEC can claim, with a straight face, that anything written there affected any stock price. You gotta love the "apology statement" on Mackey's blog. Sounds kinda like John Cleese in A Fish Called Wanda. Typical suit speak.

guest

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:28:10 -0600

Who cares, Whole Foods is filled with overpriced products and pretentious people.

guest

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:04:09 -0600

Bottom line - illegal or not. It is clearly not the way he would want to be covered in any press. It's clearly posed a threat to his company and therefore he was wrong to do it. This will ultimately probably be a step in his resignation to spend time with family withing the next 18 months. it was boneheaded and irresponsible to his investors, employees, and suppliers. One also has to wonder how many edits he has personally made to the Whole Foods Wikipedia entry. Not a crime, but not where he should be spending his time.

heyzeus

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:22:49 -0600

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118418782959963745.html Of course WSJ is pro-business, but fact's a fact, the SEC knows it has no nothing on Mackey re: "rahodeb."

mdahmus

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:20:56 -0600

truecraig has the truth. The SEC can, should, and does, in fact, get mad if you spend a lot of time talking somebody else's stock price down to get a good deal if you happen to be one of their competitors about to put them in a shopping bag. I hate Bush twice as much as the average guy, but come on.

truecraig

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:55:35 -0600

Even those who use pseudonyms have to realize that they're still open to liability for what they say or do. Wasn't he chatting down the value of a company he was negotiating a purchase for? If he had done so under his OWN name, no one would care. But under a pseudonym, trying to sound like an unrelated third party, well... However, on most message boards with regular users, their identities become obvious to other posters. Did everyone reading that board know it was him?

kenneth1

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:08:16 -0600

I doubt even the Devil thinks that haircut is cute. But Mackey's "crime" (at least as far as the Bush admin. is concerned) is being associated with liberal causes & organizations. The Exxon/Mobil merger did not receive this much scrutiny.

guest

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 15:57:45 -0600

I can't go into Whole Paycheck without getting that eww corporate feeling.

guest

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 15:16:02 -0600

Thoughtcrime. That's what he's guilty of. At least according to Mr. 5 up there.

ESeufert

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 15:05:20 -0600

Mackey didn't commit any crimes. He's not allowed to speculate on where Whole Foods' stock might move in the future? CEOs of Fortune 500 corporations do that every day. He didn't disclose any privileged information pertaining to the merger, and he didn't disclose any information about the company that wasn't already publicly available. Mackey exercised poor taste in writing those messages, but he didn't break any laws.

guest

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:44:03 -0600

Its not only questionable, its illegal to put up posting like the one predicting how high the Whole Foods Stock will rise. Several publications have gotten in trouble for similar circumstances, where they promote stocks they already own in order to raise their value and to sell them to the reading audience. Whats more absurd is the thought that because Mackey was using a pseudonym, what he wrote did not represent Mackey & Whole Foods. I don't care if he posts under the name I.P. Freely, he's the guy writing it, they are his views and its complete B.S. to say otherwise. Whole Foods is the next Wal-Mart, just with a whole lot more snobs. There's already 3 in downtown Manhattan!

guest

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:09:07 -0600

This administration gets overly involved in how other people are making money when its not the Brothers Bush involved in the profits; if it were oil or construction or anything else they are involved in it wouldn't even be considered for investigation. Just like Bush doesn't like black puppets, he doesn't like organic environmentalists either.

guest

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:03:39 -0600

Sorry. That's just questionable behavior for the CEO of a publicly traded corporation. If I were a stockholder, I'd be a bit unnerved. And quite frankly, I think his haircut ain't that great, so he has the added obstacle of overcoming people's perceptions of his taste....

guest

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:51:58 -0600

I don't think they were ill advised or career threatening. He was just blowing off some steam. Anyone who finds harm in that needs to get a grip. It's not like he was saying, "My name is John Mackey and I think everyone should stop buying Whole Food stock because I just took a leak in the lobster bisque."

heyzeus

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:18:12 -0600

His actions were ill advised and career threatening, but probably not legally actionable. It's worth asking, also, why this administration's SEC, which has been notably lax in scrutinizing oil and gas and telecom mergers, is suddenly so concerned about the effects of the Whole Foods buyout on competitive prices, consumer protection, etc. It couldn't have anything to do with the political causes and party that Whole Foods Inc. donates its money to, would it?