By Jaewon Kang
J helped popularize organic food when he co-founded Whole Foods
Market four decades ago. Over the past several months, his chain of
more than 500 stores has scrambled to adapt to another major shift
in how Americans buy groceries.
Since the coronavirus pandemic gripped the U.S. in March,
consumers are ordering more groceries online, making bigger
purchases at a time and avoiding lingering in Whole Foods' aisles.
To meet the rush for grocery deliveries, the chain temporarily
closed some urban stores to walk-in shoppers and converted them to
handling online orders only. The grocer is also expanding its
pickup operations.
"When things return to normal, there will be a lot of people who
don't go back to shopping in-person," Mr. Mackey predicts.
The pandemic has accelerated an online-grocery movement that
Whole Foods was already seeking to capitalize on as part of
Amazon.com Inc. Mr. Mackey sold Whole Foods to the online-retail
juggernaut for $13.4 billion in 2017, one of the decisions he
recounts in his new book out this month, "Conscious Leadership:
Elevating Humanity Through Business." In the second quarter of this
year, Amazon's online grocery sales, which include Whole Foods'
business, tripled from a year ago.
Mr. Mackey spoke with The Wall Street Journal from his office in
Austin. Here are edited excerpts:
WSJ: How has the pandemic changed shopping behaviors?
Mr. Mackey: People are purchasing differently, and that's partly
because they're not eating at restaurants as much. All the animal
proteins have increased tremendously, and our prepared foods are
way down. More people are shopping with a list. They come in, they
get what they want, they get out. They're not lingering longer like
they used to, pre-Covid, and I think they will again.
WSJ: The number of new coronavirus cases nationwide remains
high. How are you keeping your people safe?
Mr. Mackey: We were very early with masks, with disinfecting our
shelving, our grocery carts, our equipment. We do temperature
checks for all our team members every day. If your temperature is
high, you have to leave the store, and if it stays high, you have
to get tested. All we can do is control our environment, and I
think our environment is safe. What people do when they leave, who
they socialize with, if they're out protesting or going mask-less
-- we can't be responsible for that. I doubt anybody is catching
Covid at Whole Foods Market.
WSJ: Whole Foods paid store workers an additional $2 an hour in
the first months of the pandemic but stopped in June. Why not
continue to pay them more for working under these conditions?
Mr. Mackey: Whole Foods already pays the highest in the
supermarket business, starting out. We start out people at $15. We
paid a bonus in June, as well. We extended additional pay for
family leave, we paid sick pay, additional sick pay, we paid
quarantine pay. We've been taking care of our team members really
well. Does that mean people wish they made more money? Well, sure.
But Whole Foods has done as much or more than any of our
competitors.
WSJ: If the U.S. had a national mask mandate, would this make it
easier for retailers and their employees to enforce?
Mr. Mackey: I do not favor a national mask mandate. Think about
it: Some places [in the U.S.] never even locked down their
economies. You're going to force the whole country to abide by a
mask mandate? That's a bad idea. That should be done on a local
basis, or not at all.
WSJ: It's been three years since Amazon acquired Whole Foods.
How has it been working out?
Mr. Mackey: The best way to put it would be: If we had to make
the decision all over again, would we make this decision? The
answer is yes, because Amazon's been a great partner. They've
helped us evolve; they've helped us get better at technology,
delivery. We're taking on the parts at Amazon that can help Whole
Foods be a better company, but they haven't tried to consciously
change our culture.
WSJ: What merger challenges have you've learned from?
Mr. Mackey: Amazon has a culture that asks a lot of questions.
We took a little longer to get used to that, but that's no big
deal. That's how you learn things. They're trying to understand our
business. They want to know everything. And I think that's
healthy.
WSJ: What's the biggest leadership lesson you've adopted from
Jeff Bezos?
Mr. Mackey: Amazon wants you to write up a document explaining
your ideas, defending them, and then you can have discussions.
That's a practice Whole Foods has adopted. Amazon's also very
data-driven. As opposed to acting from the gut, Amazon says, "Show
us the data." That's been a good discipline for us. We do it
ourselves, even when we're not talking to Amazon.
WSJ: What's the best approach to helping out-of-work people
through the pandemic?
Mr. Mackey: I don't have any overall suggestions for what,
politically, the U.S. should do about unemployment. If we open the
economy back up again, unemployment's going to shrink. We've done
tremendous damage to our economy, shutting it down like we did. You
have to trust people to make good decisions. They're the best
people to decide about their families, their bodies and their
lives, and I have more confidence in individuals than I do in
government to make decisions.
Write to Jaewon Kang at jaewon.kang@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 11, 2020 10:21 ET (14:21 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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