A Vegan Dealing In Dead Animals: Whole Foods Market's John Mackey
Posted on: Monday, 22 August 2005, 00:00 CDT
Aug. 21--John Mackey is a 51-year-old vegan who is usually dressed in jeans, practises yoga and enjoys hiking in the mountains near his home in Austin, Texas, with his wife Deborah, herself a yoga teacher.
But behind the benevolent exterior of his Whole Foods Market -- motto: Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet -- is a hardened, conservative businessman with as much of an eye on profit as on principles.
His staff may be known cosily as "team members" and Mackey is quick to mention research indicating high levels of staff satisfaction, but he is less keen on them joining trade unions.
As a libertarian, Mackey opposes most forms of government and believes unions are parasites.
"The union is like having herpes," he once said. "It doesn't kill you, but it's unpleasant and inconvenient and it stops a lot of people from becoming your lover."
His 172-store empire, valued at £4.7 billion on the Nasdaq market in New York, has also been criticised by the environmental lobby for undermining small farmers and smaller wholefood operators as it brings home profits of £128 million.
All this is a long way from Mackey's modest beginnings in a garage in Austin in 1978.
After this first organic store selling local produce and home-baked bread proved a success, Mackey opened supermarket-style outlets and went on an acquisition spree, swallowing rival mid-sized organic chains in the US in the early Nineties. Last year, he paid himself £258,000 and exercised share options worth just over £500,000. Mackey was named US entrepreneur of the year in 2003 by accountancy firm Ernst & Young.
But he was appalled to lose the global title to the founder of a fast food chain in the Philippines.
Being beaten by a burger joint may turn Mackey's stomach, but his vegetarianism does not get in the way.
Shoppers at Whole Foods Market stores can buy organic meat and fish. As he puts it: "Our company deals in dead animals."
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WFMI,
Source: Daily Mail
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