Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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Taxpayers
John Mackey
I started thinking about food in 1976 while I was living in a hous-
ing co-op in Austin, Texas, which is also where I learned how to
cook. I eventually became the co-op's food buyer, which started
me thinking about how we get the various foods that show up on
the shelves of our grocery stores. In 1978, my girlfriend Renee
Lawson and I got the entrepreneurial bug, borrowed $45,000 from
family and friends, and opened our own small natural foods store.
We didn't open with a grand plan—just with the idea of creating a
store where you could buy healthy, natural, and organic foods. Two
years later, in September 1980, Renee and I partnered with Craig
Weller and Mark Skiles, and the first Whole Foods Market opened
its doors with a staff of nineteen. It's hard to believe that today,
just thirty years later, we now have 280 stores in North America
and the United Kingdom, and a staff of 52,000 team members.
Along the way, I've had what I'd call a “food awakening.” I real-
ized that the overwhelming majority of the animal-based foods be-
ing produced weren't coming to us from small, independent farms
where animals grazed in pastures, pecked around barnyards,
and felt the sun on their backs. Instead, animal agribusiness op-
erations had largely displaced farms, and the animals had become
nothing more than machines.
Farmers became “producers,” farmed animals became “food
John Mackey is the chief executive officer and co-founder of Whole Foods Market.
