"We are losing them. They are getting out of our shops, out of our brands. They are going for food without the food industry. Not only without us, but maybe against us," he said.

Danone has bought U.S. organic food producer WhiteWave in a $12.5 billion (9.87 billion pounds) deal, bringing the company more into line with healthier eating trends.

The deal also aims to boost growth at Danone, whose shares trade at a discount to rivals. The company's depressed valuation was highlighted this week as a reason for it being touted as a potential bid target.

Faber told Reuters that Danone, which has no large controlling shareholder, was "no more and no less than usual" vulnerable to a possible takeover bid.

Danone is seeking to build on the WhiteWave deal with a campaign to promote itself as a leader in terms of healthy eating habits.

"The global industrial food system is reaching its limits," Faber told Reuters in a phone interview before his speech in Berlin. He said evidence of this included obesity and malnutrition, wasting water and food, soil depletion, and climate change.

"Everywhere people want to regain control over their food," said Faber, a rock climber and campaigner for corporate social responsibility.

BUYING INTO THE FUTURE

WhiteWave's products have outsold mainstream packaged food businesses in recent years, highlighting the consumer shift toward natural foods and healthier eating. The deal should also help Danone to cope with tougher market conditions in dairy products in Europe, and babyfood in China.

WhiteWave makes Danone the world's biggest producer of organic food and gives it a stronger foothold in North America, which is becoming its biggest market, accounting for $6 billion, or around 25 percent of group sales against 13 percent previously.

Faber said he hoped the new Danone signature would help to address a general consumer mistrust of big, corporate brands.

"Small brands communicate on their intentions, they are activists. It is key that big brands also state their intentions," he said.

Faber, the first Danone CEO from outside the founding Riboud family, is pushing on with a dual economic and social agenda, which - like that of many blue-chip companies - aims to not only boost shareholder value and profits but also meet other targets on the environment and social policies.

"The big risk is to avoid transforming ourselves and end up only cutting costs to return cash to shareholders," he said.

A pledge at the annual shareholder meeting in April for Danone to be certified as a for-profit corporation that commits to positive social and environmental goals - was in line with that strategy, he said.

BID TALK

Bid speculation around Danone pushed its shares sharply higher this week. Broker Exane said it could be an acquisition target for Kraft Heinz, also citing PepsiCo and Coca Cola as credible suitors.

Analysts at Berenberg wrote in a research note that investors would need concrete evidence of Danone's progress in its new areas.

"We believe investors will need to see further evidence of organic growth and margin momentum to agree with the CEO that Danone is 'uniquely placed to embrace the food revolution' and for its valuation discount to the sector to close fully."

Faber is confident Danone will deliver. "I am absolutely convinced our strategy creates value for the long-term but also the short-term," he said, adding he expected sales growth to improve in the third quarter.

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon, additional reporting by Emma Thomasson in Berlin; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Jane Merriman)

Continued here:

Danone Looks to Ride Healthy Food Revolution Wave - New York Times

Whole Foods Buy Out May Increase Sales of Organic and Non-GMO Food

The way food is being marketed and sold to consumers is changing, and this will have an impact on farmers and food producers. The purchase of Whole Foods by Amazon is just the beginning of a revolution in the food retailing industry. According to Richard Feinberg, professor of consumer science at Purdue, It is difficult to overstate the impact that this is going to have in the grocery industry.

Feinberg says Amazon has the ability to deliver food to people quickly, no matter where they are. Amazon brings a technology and distribution ability that no grocery retailer has. This will allow Whole Foods to do what it does, but better and more profitably. Grocery chains like Kroger, Target, and Wal-Mart are not ready for what Amazon brings to the table with the new and improved Whole Foods.

With the purchase of Whole Foods, Amazon will now be able to do that with the unique food products Whole Foods has. Whole Foods is a chain that does not sell GMO food products and stresses organic, antibiotic free, and less processed food items. Amazon will now have the ability to offer and deliver those kind of products anywhere. Whole Foods currently has 430 stories, but after the acquisition, they will have 350 million stores because they will be on every desktop, Feinberg says. About 50 percent of U.S. households have an Amazon Prime membership. Prime membership for groceries cements a relationship with a grocery store, and it encourages members who have not shopped there to shop in Whole Foods.

Feinberg says other retailers will be quick to react and adapt, Other food retailers will have to make changes or disappear. He added that Amazons goal is to be bigger than Wal-Mart in the food business. He predicts this change will come quickly, within the next 3 to 5 years.

Feinberg also says that Amazon has a test store called Amazon Go in Seattle that is displaying how Amazon does groceries. Two features are significant, Customers swipe their Amazon Prime Card when they enter. When they take something off the shelf and put it in their cart, it registers in their account. If they put the item back it, takes it off their account. When they walk out of the store, the payment is instantaneous. No more waiting to check out, which is the biggest complaint that consumers have of grocery stores.

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Whole Foods Buy Out May Increase Sales of Organic and Non-GMO Food - Hoosier Ag Today

When the news broke last Friday morning that online retailer Amazon had purchased organic supermarket chain Whole Foods Market for a cool $13.7 billion, the jokes immediately began to fly. Several people tweeted that maybe Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had accidentally placed an order for Whole Foodsthe entire companyon his Amazon Echo. Comedian Stephen Colbert quipped on Twitter that Amazon bought Whole Foods, insuring farm to market to door to UPS to redelivery attempt to UPS to missed package to UPS back to market food!

But for many, this is a huge dealand dead serious. If it happensand there are at least a few observers and a congressman who think the merger may violate antitrust lawsAmazons move into the grocery marketplace signals that the giant appears poised to realign consumer habits around how we buy quinoa, cereal, and meat in precisely the same way it changed the way we buy books, clothes, and detergent.

That prospect sent shockwaves through the set-in-its-ways grocery industry, wreaking havoc on the stocks of brick-and-mortar food retailers like Walmart, Target, and Kroger. (Kroger saw its stocks plummet an unbelievable 28 percent Thursday and Friday.)

This is the first step to changing just how society shops for food in general, says Mike Lee, a product consultant and founder of The Future Market.

And, provided the sale doesnt face antitrust challenges, a successful merger of the two companies will likely be a mixed bag for the sustainable food movement in America.

Food Retail is Shifting Toward Healthy, Sustainable

Whether its a trend or shift that is here to stay, food that is perceived to be better for people and the planet is hot. The AmazonWhole Foods deal confirms what organic and other natural food sales trends have been showing us for years. According to the Organic Trade Association, Americans spent $43 billion on organic foods in 2016an increase of more than eight percent over the previous year. And Whole Foods has positioned itself as an alternative to the mainstream, even as it has worked to reach an increasingly mainstream audience over the last decade. And since the hedge fund Jana Partners upped its stake in Amazon in April, a move like this has been on the horizon.

Several CEOs of natural and organic brandseven the companies direct competitorssaid the merger validated their core principles, as they double-down on differentiating themselves.

Bentley Hall, CEO of online grocery-delivery service Good Eggs, shared an internal memo that includes the sentiment The game is on and I am honestly excited and honored to compete against such a worthy new opponent.

Gunnar Lovelace, co-founder of online food retailer Thrive Marketa retailer selling only organic, non-GMO products onlinesays his executive team was not in panic mode Friday morning. Instead, he said the company had recommitted to its principles of high-quality food, environmental sustainability, and fair labor standards in a way they feel goes above and beyond Whole Foods.

Thats a very different value proposition to the consumer who wants value and conveniencebut also wants real alignment with doing better in the world, he says. [Disclosure: The author has in the past worked as a writer for Thrive Markets blog and has written a feature for Whole Foods Magazine.]

Increased Access to Healthy Food

Though the numbers have never been made public, analysts estimate that more than 50 million Americans, from all walks of life, pay for Amazon Prime. By joining forces with an organic grocer like Whole Foods, Amazon is poised to bring natural and organic food directly to more Americans than ever, at prices that could be more competitive with conventional foods. Reports are already surfacing to this effect. Bloomberg is reporting that Amazon wants to shed Whole Foods Whole Paycheck image and make it more competitive with larger retailers like Walmart. If this happens, affordable organic food could become the rule, rather than the exceptionand find its way into more kitchens than ever.

This includes those of many low-income Americans who lack access to affordable, healthy food. Already, John Foraker, CEO of organic food company Annies, has called on Jeff Bezos to commit to ending food desertsurban and rural neighborhoods containing few healthy food optionsby 2027.

The ability for low-income Americans to use supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP) benefits online could assist this cause immensely. The United States Department of Agriculture is piloting a program, expected to launch in early 2018, allowing SNAP recipients in seven states to use their benefit to buy food online. Amazon is one of the retailers selected for the program.

Amazon Could Singlehandedly Transform Our Food System

Chef Alice Waters, a leader in the good food movement, expressed her hope for the merger in a strategically crafted open letter to Bezos on Friday.

You have an unprecedented opportunity to change our food system overnight: It is time to demand that produce comes from farmers who are taking care of the land, to require meat and seafood to come from operations that are not depleting natural resources, and to support the entrepreneurial endeavors of those American farmers and food makers who do not enjoy federal subsidies, she wrote.

Its time to do the right thing for our country, our farmers, and our planet, she continued. And were all here to help you do it!

Of course, by essentially asking Amazon to bring its standards up, however, Waters goal may be at odds with the idea of bringing prices of this kind of food down for consumers.

Concerns Abound

If an AmazonWhole Foods deal is allowed to go through, every food retailerbig-box stores, online retailers, and even farmers marketswill feel the crunch, says Future Markets Lee. Meal-kit delivery services like Blue Apron and Plated could suffer the most in the short term. Swallowing up lifestyle services like these would be easy pickings for the new grocery behemoth, Lee says, given Whole Foods access to quality food and Amazons logistics prowess.

According to Barry C. Lynn, Director of the Open Markets Program at New America, thats too much power for one corporation. Lynns organization condemned the deal Friday, calling it anti-competitive and asking regulators to reject the merger.

This private corporation already dominates every corner of online commerce, and uses its power to set terms and prices for many of the most important products Americans buy or sell to one another, Lynn said in a statement. Now Amazon is exploiting that advantage to take over physical retail.

While he does think anti-trust regulators must be vigilant, Parke Wilde, associate professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, suggested the combined company is unlikely to be able to control prices as a monopolist does. In a healthy food system, he says, smaller farms and retailers would play a growing role, and he has mixed feelings about a merger of major corporations.

We should never forget that these are big corporations, pursuing their own profits foremost, but I still see some potential in a merger of Amazon and Whole Foods, Parke said.

For others, the deal could create a labor war. Bloomberg reported over the weekend that Amazon may be planning to lay off Whole Foods cashiers and replace them with machines. But beyond in-store employees, Michele Simon, the executive director of the Plant-Based Foods Association and author of Appetite for Profit, worries about the additional pressures being placed on farmers and food manufacturers to lower prices at a time when most of our food prices are not reflective of their true cost.

The driving down of food prices could come at a cost to farmers and every worker throughout the supply chain, she told Civil Eats.

And even as demand for organic food increases in America, less than 1 percent of domestic fields are certified organicand when domestic demand outstrips domestic supply, the practices that underlie USDA Organic-certified foods are sometimes put at risk. Expanding the supply of U.S.-grown organic foods is hampered by federal incentives that give the upper hand to conventionally grown food. So even if tens of millions more Americans begin to demand more humane and environmentally friendly food, the supplyat least here in the U.S.will likely fall short.

We still need a host of policy reforms to fix this problem, Simon said. Will Amazon and Whole Foods join us in that effort? I hope so.

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Will the Amazon-Whole Foods Deal Mean Better Food for All? - Civil Eats

Earlier this month, the North Florida School of Special Education (NFSSE) announced a new partnership with The Arc Jacksonville Village, which would bring organic fruits, vegetables and herbs grown at the schools farm into the residential campus dining hall.

More than 120 adults over the age of 18 with diagnoses including Down syndrome, autism, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders, cerebral palsy and other developmental disabilities, call The Arc Jacksonville Village home.

Debbie Johnson, board member at The Arc Jacksonville, said prior to the partnership with NFSSE, residents were fed by a full-time chef.

We have been in operations at the village for a year and we were evaluating the cost effectiveness of the food service program here, she said. During those series of conversations, we talked to the NFSSE because we knew about their Berry Good Farms culinary program.

NFSSE launched Berry Good Farms in 2011 and it not only provides sustainable food, it serves as a training opportunity for students who are transitioning out of the school, as well as compensated employment for post-graduates.

Johnson said the partnership came out of several conversations with Sally Hazelip, executive director of NFSSE.

We felt that because of the experience the school had with a culinary program that what theyd offer here would be delicious, healthy meals for our residents and that they would offer these quality meals at an affordable price, she said. We saw an opportunity for the school to come here and expand their Berry Good Farms program.

In addition to providing meals to The Arc Jacksonville Village residents, NFSSE will offer a culinary program starting in August.

We want to teach kids how to function in the kitchen as well as learn culinary skills, Hazelip said. The culinary school will be open to The Arc residents and our own students.

The Berry Good Farms launched On the Gos food truck in 2015 as a compensated employment opportunity for students.

Hazelip said the caf at The Arc Jacksonville Village will be an additional opportunity for compensation.

Within a year, well have about 15 to 20 students who will work there and get paid to cook in the afternoons, she said. Well have a caf manager, assistant manager, catering and food truck manager who will be housed there to supervise students.

Johnson said the partnership between the two entities is a natural fit.

Theres a common thread with whom we serve and, oftentimes, NFSSE students come and live here at our village, she said. Over the years, there have been other partnerships and things weve done together, and I can almost say with 100 percent certainty that this isnt the last partnership with the school.

Johnson anticipates expanding the culinary program in the future.

If we see that many of our residents and students are interested in the program, then itll get bigger, she said. If our residents learn that youre not simply watering a leafy plant, but thats a sustainable source of food, that education and awareness is so valuable.

Hazelip said the culinary program is another opportunity that has been given to students.

Whats offered here is so different than 50 years ago and our students are given opportunities they never would have had, she said. Its a gift to have a kitchen that we didnt have to raise money to build and that we can provide this service.

Hazelip added, Im excited for the possibilities of whats to happen in the next year.

Moving forward, Hazelip said volunteers will be crucial to the success of the caf and culinary program at The Arc Jacksonville Village.

Volunteers are an important aspect because we really believe so much in reverse inclusion, which means that instead of typical inclusion where our students are included in activities, people come to us, she said. Id encourage people to volunteer and work alongside our students to give them assistance reading a recipe and using a knife.

To volunteer, contact Ellen Hiser, director of Berry Good Farms, at (904) 724-8323 or ehiser@northfloridaschool.org.

Ann Friedman: (904) 359-4619

The rest is here:

The Arc partners with special education school to bring organic ... - Florida Times-Union

A customer shops at a Whole Foods Market on Oct. 15, 2014 in San Francisco.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Whole Foods Market founder John Mackey was livid. Theyre greedy bastards, Mackey spouted to Texas Monthly in April after the investment management firm Jana Partners, Whole Foods second-biggest shareholder, signaled its intention to sell off his company. These people, they just want to sell Whole Foods Market and make hundreds of millions of dollars, and they have to know that Im going to resist that. Whole Foods is my baby, Mackey declared. Im going to protect my kid, and theyve got to knock Daddy out if they want to take it over.

Yet justtwo months later, Mackey is selling his baby to Amazon for $13.7 billion, a dramatic denouement for a company that is deeply rooted in the hippie counterculture of the 1960s and 70s. Since its founding, Whole Foods has made its name bucking corporate conventional wisdomeven as it has come to epitomize the massive, often mercenary contradictions of Big Organic. The company sold organic foods long before any major supermarket chain thought it was worthwhile, and its thrived in part by defying the grocery industrys insistence on centralized distribution and standardization.

Now the organic supermarket pioneer will be owned by one of the most brutally efficient and standardizedretailers in the world, a company with a relentless focus on selling things cheaper and faster.

The purchase is a dramatic leap for Amazon into brick-and-mortar commerce. So far, the company has only launched a handful of grocery pick-up locations and storefronts for selling books. But the acquisition of Whole Foods vastly expands Amazons share of the grocery trade, a move that should raise deep concerns about a marketplace already dominated by a handful of massive retailers.(Disclosure: Slate is an Amazon affiliate; when you click on an Amazon link from Slate, the magazine gets a cut of the proceeds from whatever you buy.)

But perhaps more significantly, it signals the end of a dream for Mackey and Whole Foods, and even for the entire organic food business. With more than 400 locations, Whole Foods has long ruled the organic marketplace. But unlike any other national retailer, it claims to be rooted in environmentalism and the hippie movement of the 1970s. Its not that Whole Foods didnt care about profits. Mackey has long contended that Whole Foods began as a company seeking to make our country and world a better place to live by recognizing human rights, food safety, and environmental deterioration were major concerns. But with its sale to Amazon, a company with a poor environmental track record, questionable labor practices, and limited experience selling organic food, Whole Foods has lost any credible link to its countercultural roots. Whatever Whole Foods will be able to say about itself now, it will be much harder for it to maintain its do-gooder image.

The modern organic food business started as a cottage industry of longhairs selling brown rice and tofu out of wooden barrels in small stores. In 1978, Mackey and his then-partner, Renee Lawson Hardy, launched one such store, a vegetarian grocery in a two-story house called SaferWay. The name spoofed Safeway and indicted the environmental dangers of supermarket chains reliance on large-scale agribusiness and wasteful production methods.Two years later, Mackey merged the store with a competitor to form a new business he and his partners would call Whole Foods Market. In the next decade, the store expanded throughout Texas and into other states, and by the start of the 90s, it had become the highest-volume seller of organic food in the country.

Whole Foods growth was rapid. In 1992, the company became the first ever publicly traded organic foods retailer. The organic food marketplace transformed into a major industry with Whole Foods at its helm. Yet Mackey and Whole Foods insisted their company wasnt only interested in profits. The companys Declaration of Interdependence, a mission statement of its core values, contains sections on Team Member Happiness and Environmental Stewardship. With missionary zeal, Mackey has devoted himself to promoting conscious capitalism in a popular 2013 book by that title and in a series of CEO summits he organizes.

Mackeys politics havent always aligned with Whole Foods stated values of conscious capitalism, of course. In recent years, hes speciously criticized the Affordable Care Act as fascist, and hes also remarked that climate change isnt necessarily bad. And for all its public statements endorsing employee satisfaction, Whole Foods has long opposed workers efforts to unionize.

Despite Mackeys libertarian leanings, Whole Foods sets itself apart from other chains.

Yet Whole Foods remains one of the most environmentally responsible retailers in the country, ranking highly on a variety of sustainability metrics. Whole Foods also offers its employees some unusual freedoms. Individual stores and their departments have considerable power to make purchasing decisions, and local managers enjoy a level of discretion unheard of at most chain stores. Employees have major input in hiring and get to vote to approve or reject new co-workers whove completed a trial period. Despite Mackeys libertarian leanings, Whole Foods sets itself apart from other chains through these practices.

Will Whole Foods be able to retain its distinctive culture once this deal is finalized? While Amazon says it wants to keep Whole Foods as is, its impossible not to wonder how Amazon's corporate culture might rub off, especially as the store struggles to compete with other sellers of organic products such as Trader Joes, German discounters such as Aldi and Lidl, and even Walmart and conventional supermarkets.

While deeply objectionable, Whole Foods efforts to discourage unionization seem timid in comparison to Amazons proud endorsement of unreasonably high expectations with uncompensated overtime, combative meetings, and encouraging employees to anonymously report each others mistakes to management. Working conditions in Amazons shipping facilities appear just as bad, if not worse. It seems unlikely that Amazons cutthroat managerial approach will tolerate Whole Foods employees long-held freedoms and team leaders decentralized autonomy for long.

The sale also jeopardizes Whole Foods devotion to environmental stewardship. Amazons Web Services subsidiary is one of the dirtiest and least transparent companies in the sector, far behind its major competitors, with zero reporting of its energy or environmental footprint to any source or stakeholder, according to a 2014 report by Greenpeace.If Amazon doesnt value sustainability, will it accept the considerable expense and effort that Whole Foods devotes to environmental stewardship?

Top Comment

When did Whole Foods have a do-gooder reputation? It's always been a symbol of elitism. (I can say that since I shop there occasionally, but not exclusively.) More...

After six consecutive quarters of losses, Whole Foods had recently begun to make its own changes in the composition of its board and executive team. But such changes are trivial compared to being swallowed by the worlds largest online retailer.With its relentless efficiency standards, Amazon is poised to radically transform not only the pioneering organic chain but the entire brick-and-mortar grocery business.

Whole Foods may have been John Mackeys baby, the object of his affection he raised from infancy. But once this sale is completed, Amazon will be its legal guardian and Whole Foods will be the online retailers stepchild. Mackey and Whole Foods already debatable claims of conscious capitalism now seem even more dubious.

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So Much for Conscious Capitalism - Slate Magazine

Amazons planned purchase of high end grocery chain Whole Foods introduces a lot of questions - many of them around technology, delivery, and the future of retail. Its also a time to consider what, exactly, the Whole Foods value proposition is. After all, were told that Whole Foods seeks the finest organic food, but not all their customers have been fully satisfied with what they get in return for their dollars.

By and large, when folks pay more for food, they want it to taste better. Whatever labels we read about sustainability or endorsements about health, the thing that we always can judge for ourselves is how good a food tastes. And many people claim that organic, whatever its other virtues, does taste better.

Others disagree, and the science is mixed.

Studies show that some organic foods can have a different flavor, due to factors like how plants respond to environmental stress, but often differences are subtle and may fade away in the face of other factors like long transportation to reach stores. Plus, some organic ingredients go into processed foods in small quantities where they add almost no distinct flavor at all.

The practical implications of organic flavor appeared in a recent Washington Post investigation of mislabeled food imports. Shipments started out conventional, yet somewhere in the paper trail received an organic label. It was a multi-million dollar fraud, made possible because that label provided the only way for shoppers to know they were eating organic - they couldnt taste a difference for themselves.

We didnt have to move this far away from using our senses to know our food. In Vermont, organic certifiers provide truthful labeling while also supporting a better consumer experience. They encourage local organic food, eaten at the peak of flavor, or plant varieties that prize flavor over the ability to withstand cross-country transportation, or home gardeners who grow the freshest food possible in exactly the varieties they want. Its reasonable to expect food produced in a thoughtful, sustainable way to offer pleasure that goes beyond reading the fine print on a certification label.

All of which brings us back around to the idea that the simplest reason to buy premium foods is because they taste better - and when they dont, thats a problem. This concept doesnt take away from our loftier ideals - it supports them. And who doesnt want food to be delicious?

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Jordan: Organic Food Spotlight - Vermont Public Radio

1992: From Austin to Wall Street

Now operating 12 stores in Texas, California, North Carolina and Louisiana, Whole Foods Market went public. The prospectus stated that a significant segment of the population now attributes added value to high quality natural food.

Marian Burros, a food reporter for The New York Times, wrote that these gleaming new supermarkets 13,000 to 27,000 square feet of floor space bear about as much resemblance to the grungy, 1960s fern-bedecked natural food co-op, with its shriveled produce and flour stored in trash cans, as McDonalds does to Lutce.

Later that year, the company expanded into the Northeast with the purchase of the Boston-based supermarket chain Bread and Circus.

1996: From Hippie to Hip Capitalist

Whole Foods acquired Fresh Fields, a Maryland-based chain with 22 stores. Mr. Mackeys natural foods empire now consisted of 70 stores in 16 states. While still small compared to traditional supermarket chains, the natural and organic foods company grew at more than 20 percent a year. The next year, revenue surpassed $1 billion.

1997: Whole Foods, Whole Paycheck

Whole Foods started its store brand, 365 Everyday Value. The private label was later used to combat the perception that Whole Foods, sometimes known as Whole Paycheck for its notoriously high prices, was too expensive for everyday people.

2002: Fighting Unions

Mr. Mackey says he is pro-employee, but anti-union. In Madison, Wis., workers voted to unionize, a victory that was later decertified. Mr. Mackey told The Times that the vote came from his inattention to worker concerns. The following year, he visited all the Whole Foods stores in the United States to bond with employees.

2004: Manhattans Largest Supermarket

Whole Foods, which already operated a 40,000-square-foot store in Chelsea, opened its flagship 58,000-square-foot store in the basement of the Time Warner Center. On opening day, a line stretched out the door.

2006: Wall Street and Foodies Grow Disillusioned

Critics began to complain that Whole Foods was straying from its roots. The newer stores focus on prepared food and include in-store restaurants and spas. Bruised by competition with traditional grocery stores, the stock dropped by nearly 40 percent.

2007: An Ill-Fated Merger

The Federal Trade Commission challenged the acquisition of Wild Oats, claiming that the deal would create a natural-foods monopoly. The F.T.C. discovered that Mr. Mackey had used a pseudonym to write anonymous blog posts attacking Wild Oats. The end game is now under way for OATS, Mr. Mackey wrote in one. Whole Foods is systematically destroying their viability as a business market by market, city by city. Two years later, Whole Foods agreed to sell 13 stores to resolve the complaint.

2008: Selling a Stake to a Private Investor

Squeezed by the financial crisis and traditional grocery stores, Whole Foods stock plummeted 76 percent in one year. The company sold a 17 percent stake to Green Equity Investors, an affiliate of Los Angeles-based private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners.

2009: Obamacare and a Boycott

Mr. Mackey wrote an Op-Ed in The Wall Street Journal quoting Margaret Thatcher and arguing that the last thing our country needs is a massive new health care entitlement. His companys liberal-minded customers responded with a boycott.

2013: The G.M.O. Label

Whole Foods became the first retailer in the United States to label all genetically modified foods. The companys stock peaked at $65.24.

2015: Wall Street Sours

Wall Street analysts grew increasingly negative as organic food became cheaper and more popular at big supermarket chains.

Conventional retailers can get it into their stores more cheaply, and they can be more predatory on pricing, Mark Retzloff, a pioneer of the natural and organic foods retail business, told The Times. If one of those stores is just down the street from a Whole Foods, theres a big segment of their customer base that isnt going to shop at Whole Foods anymore.

2017: Under Hedge Fund Duress

After the activist hedge fund Jana Partners took a stake in Whole Foods and pushed for change, the company overhauled its board in May and began a push to cut costs. Gabrielle Sulzberger, a private equity executive who is married to Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the chairman and publisher of The New York Times, became chairwoman.

In an interview with Texas Monthly published on June 14, Mr. Mackey criticized activist investors. Its the idea that business is about a bunch of greedy bastards running around exploiting people, screwing their customers, taking advantage of their employees, dumping their toxic waste in the environment, acting like sociopaths, he said.

Two days later, Amazon agreed to buy Whole Foods for $13.4 billion.

A version of this article appears in print on June 17, 2017, on Page B5 of the New York edition with the headline: The Life of an Organic Giant.

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How Whole Foods Became the Organic Giant - The New York Times - New York Times

What is organic food?

Food that is labeled "organic" has been grown or raised without synthetic chemical fertilizers, pest killers (pesticides), weed killers (herbicides), hormones, or drugs. Synthetic means that they are made in a lab.

This means that farmers and ranchers who grow organic food:

Some countries, including the United States, have rules that govern when a farmer or rancher may use the organic label. Before a grower can use that label, a government inspector goes to the farm to make sure that the rules are being followed.

Don't assume that food labeled "natural," "sustainable," "hormone-free," or "free-range" is organic. Look for the USDA organic seal .

You may have these questions about organic food:

Food grown with pesticides can have small amounts of pesticide left on the food when it gets to the store.

If you are concerned about pesticides on your food, here are some steps you can take:2

WebMD Medical Reference from Healthwise

Read more from the original source:

Organic and Chemical-Free Foods-Overview - WebMD

Online retailer Amazon unveiled plans to buy Whole Foods Market in its biggest food and supermarket acquisition to date.

On Friday, the multi-billion pound chain confirmed the buy-out of Whole Foods for a mammoth $13.7 billion - or 10.7 billion.

The Seattle-based retailer, which sells just about everything from pet food, to fashion, jewellery, electronics and TV shows, said it had long been considering the takeover in its bid to push into the grocery market, with discussions as recent as last autumn.

Amazon will buy the organic food chain for 42 US dollars per share - 32.80 - but will continue to operate stores under the Whole Foods brand.

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Yes No

Whole Foods currently has 460 stores across the US, Canada and the UK, with nine of them in Britain, namely dotted around the capital.

The grocery store - which specialises in healthy, vegan and eco-products - will continue operating under the Whole Foods name, the company's headquarters will remain in Austin.

Co-founder John Mackey will stay on as Whole Foods CEO.

In a statement, Mackey said: This partnership presents an opportunity to maximise value for Whole Foods Markets shareholders, while at the same time extending our mission and bringing the highest quality, experience, convenience and innovation to our customers."

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said: "Millions of people love Whole Foods Market because they offer the best natural and organic foods, and they make it fun to eat healthy."

Maria Prados, VP at online payments platform, Worldpay, added: "Amazons move to buy Whole Foods is a clear sign of its intention to disrupt the grocery industry globally.

"From the "Dash" buy button, to the launch of the AmazonFresh service last year, the eCommerce giant has been taking clear steps to build its position in the grocery sector. And investing in a physical presence could be the key to Amazons success in this space.

With one in ten Brits now doing all their grocery shopping online*, it is now easier than ever to buy household necessities from the comfort of our sofa.

"We have reached a tipping point in the evolution of the UK grocery market, and it will be interesting to see whether Amazon will continue to focus on their culture of convenience and reliability, or whether they will end up creating a whole new online shopping experience, taking the chore out of the weekly shop."

Amazon's latest shock announcement comes just days after the firm teased of plans to emerge in the cars market - with reports claiming sales will be piloted on its UK website, before being rolling out to other countries, if successfull.

According to claims leaked on German website, Automobilwoche, the new service will be based in Luxembourg but will start its operations in the UK first.

Amazon recently recruited Christoph Moeller, a motor industry expert at consultancy Oliver Wyman, to spearhead the new project, although it's yet to confirm any official plans.

It's not the first time Amazon has dipped into the automobiles industry. In Italy last year it partnered with Fiat Chrysler to sell the Fiat 500 and the Panda on its Italian website.

According to Auto Express, Amazon cars could allow customers to order their motors online and have it delivered to a nearby dealer.

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Amazon confirms plans to buy organic food chain Whole Foods in mammoth $13.7 billion takeover - Mirror.co.uk

To say the June 16 announcement that Amazon announced that it will be acquiring Whole Foods, the iconic purveyor of organic wares and interesting beverages, to the tune of $13.7 billion sent shock waves through the retail sector would be an understatement. Whole Foods has been struggling as of late: Amid competition from companies like Target and WalMart, both of which have been ramping up their sales of organic and natural products, Whole Foods has posted seven consecutive quarters of tumbling sales and in May, swapped out five of its dozen board members (one of whom, full disclosure, is Fast Company owner Joe Mansueto) in an effort to inject new energy into the company. By selling to Amazon, theyre throwing a Hail Mary.

But as substantial as the deal is, its perhaps not all that surprising, once the aftershocks fade. I was surprised, but not too surprised, Joe Dobrow, who was head of marketing at Whole Foods until 2000, and subsequently wrote the book Natural Prophets: From Health Foods to Whole FoodsHow the Pioneers of the Industry Changed the Way We Eat and Reshaped American Business, tells Fast Company. Rumors of a Whole Foods sale had been circulating for a while, Dobrow says; competitors like Albertsons, Kroger, and Publix had all expressed interest.

While selling out to a larger grocery retailer with a bigger reach might have given Whole Foods the financial boost it needed, that would have entailed sticking with the status quo. If youre looking at the talent pipeline at Whole FoodsfollowingCEO John Mackeytheyre all grocery guys over there, Dobrow says. What Whole Foods needs is innovation, and if youre looking for where that brilliant visionary leadership is going to come from, its not going to be from within Whole Foods. But Amazon could be a huge booster shot of innovative leadership, and set Whole Foods on a path to adapt to the 21st century, which has been lacking.

The entire $800 billion grocery industry as a whole, Dobrow says, is facing some uncertainty. Caught in the middle of a will-they-or-wont-they dance with online retailfueled in part by Amazon, whose AmazonFresh grocery delivery service debuted in 2013the financial performances of brick-and-mortar groceries like Kroger, which have long been predictably strong, are faltering. While online grocery sales account for only 4.3% of the market currently, a report from Nielsen this year predicted that theyll reach as much as 20% of the market share by 2025. That gives you a sense of how much of a ramp there is, Dobrow says.

And in buying up Whole Foods, Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, seems to have identified another sector of the grocery industry with a huge growth potential: natural and organic food. Despite the enormous growth of Whole Foods since it was founded in 1978, and despite the piqued interest of larger retailers in selling higher quality products, natural and organic foods still represent only around 5% of all food sales in the United States.

Before this deal, you heard people in the industry saying that if we could get organic sales up to 10% of the market share, that would be a huge chunk of business, and represent a huge societal change, Dobrow says. So Im sure Bezos took a look and realized it was a no-brainer for Amazon to play a role in expanding the percent of the market taken up by natural and organic food.

And the way theyll be doing so appears will likely be through ramping up Whole Foods e-commerce component. For those Whole Foods devotees concerned that the Amazon acquisition will tarnish the stores signature community-centric and friendly ethos, theres little cause for immediate concern: Amazon has said that proceedings at Whole Foods 456 outposts, as well as its handful overseas and in Canada, will remain largely unchanged. Amazon, at least initially, says it has notimplemented the technology it developed to facilitate Amazon Go, its Seattle-based cashless convenience store, nor are there any planned payoffs. Of course, that could all change in the future, but the company has let subsidiary Zappos largely chart its own, often idiosyncratic course. (On the other hand, there is certainly the possibility that Amazon, always ruthless, thought this was just the cheapest way to get a lot of urban real estate for warehouses.)

What might change: According to Dobrow, it would not be surprising to see Whole Foods launch some loyalty programs, and integrate Amazon purchase algorithms into their retail experience. Previously, Dobrow says, such initiatives have not fit into the Whole Foods ethos, but now that the company is owned by Amazon, theyre going to accept the notion that Whole Foods should be analyzing their data and giving them suggestions and recommendations, and auto-refilling their cupboards based on past purchase history, or installing mini-kiosks in malls or airports.

If Jeff Bezos is putting Amazon backing behind a retailer that, despite its cult following, still has only a small share of the market cornered, he is hopefully making the statement that Whole Foodsand the kinds of products it sells and supportsis the direction were all heading in.

Eillie Anzilotti is an assistant editor for Fast Company's Ideas section, covering sustainability, social good, and alternative economies. Previously, she wrote for CityLab.

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