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Straight talk from Whole Foods CEO

The website for Whole Foods Market declares that “we seek out the finest natural and organic foods available, maintain the strictest quality standards in the industry, and have an unshakeable commitment to sustainable agriculture.” At the January Economic Club of Phoenix luncheon, club president and Professor of Practice Jeffrey Cunningham interviewed co-CEO Walter Robb IV about Whole Foods, the grocery industry, and his philosophy.

The website for Whole Foods Market declares that “we seek out the finest natural and organic foods available, maintain the strictest quality standards in the industry, and have an unshakeable commitment to sustainable agriculture.” At the January Economic Club of Phoenix luncheon, club president and Professor of Practice Jeffrey Cunningham interviewed co-CEO Walter Robb IV about Whole Foods, the grocery industry, and his philosophy. This event was part of the 30th season of the Economic Club of Phoenix speaker series. The club, associated with the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, has become the preeminent Arizona forum for the exchange of ideas about business and the economy.

Listen to the discussion


Ten highlights of Walter Robb’s remarks:

  1. How the Whole Foods potpie illustrates values: “We have two core values: one, serving and satisfying and delighting our customers, and two, the excellence of our team members. That potpie represents something that was actually made in the store by a team member who has a sense of ownership and participation in the company's future. I think if you walk in Whole Foods, that's something that you will feel.”
  2. Robb’s personal philosophy: “Dream big, think big, but don't forget that at the end of the chess game, the king and the pawn go back in the same box. Remember that. That's really important to my philosophy … what is the reason you're in business or in anything, for that matter? What is your purpose in life? What are you trying to accomplish? The beautiful thing about that question is that you can keep asking yourself all your life and keep getting great answers.”
  3. The emerging role of business: “This idea that business has to embrace a wider circle of responsibility, embrace a wider circle of stakeholders in making decisions, seems to me self‑evident … the world is moving in a way that companies that do not evolve that way are going to find themselves alone on an island, without the support that they've historically enjoyed.”
  4. On corporate governance: “I think the governance area is really continuing to evolve. I think any board is going to have to recognize that there's going to be greater transparency. We've got no problem with that. We're already hanging everything out anyways.”
  5. Commitment to people: “Our philosophy is, you attend to your customers and your team members, and through doing that, you will make money for your shareholders.”
  6. On the Whole Foods animal compassion standards: “Six, seven years ago, we actually sat down and worked species by species to put together our animal compassion standards for how animals are produced and raised. They're all up on the website, 100 percent transparent. We did it collaboratively with the PETA folks, with the animal rights advocates, with the scientists, with the suppliers. We created standards for how to raise the animals over a five‑year process.”
  7. Why he goes to work in the morning: “The principal reason I've done this all my life is not for money. It's because it's tremendously fulfilling. At the end I ask, what are you doing in your life? Are you doing something that you really care about, that you really believe in? I'm as excited today about the work we're doing as I've ever been — this idea of bringing healthy food to the world. It’s incredibly fulfilling. On the deepest level internally, it means the world to me.”
  8. About his compensation: “In our particular culture, Whole Foods, we roll as a team. We work together. We share together. We win together. We lose together. The average CEO in America makes almost 500 times the average worker pay. It creates a gap. All the special privileges — we just don't do that in our culture.”
  9. What he worries about at night: “The things I worry about are, eternally, the evolving competition and food safety and hacking, but the thing I think the most about is the culture of our company, which is the secret, special part of our company and how we're going to continue to evolve that as we get larger.”
  10. The direction going forward: “I think Whole Foods will continue to lead the future in terms of whole foods with a small ‘w’: the real power to heal people through their diet and heal the farming community and heal the communities in which they serve.”

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