The healthy, conscious capitalist, w/Whole Foods Market co-founder John Mackey

Masters of Scale

WaitWhat

Entrepreneurship, Business, Management, Reid Hoffman, Mindset, Diversity & Inclusion, Jeff Berman, Bob Safian, Startups

4.6 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2024

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

John Mackey, co-founder and former CEO of Whole Foods Market, started in the grocery business as a Texas undergraduate seeking the keys to a happy life. The self-described “hippie” opened one natural foods store in Austin and scaled beyond imagination from there. In his 44 years as CEO, Whole Foods grew to more than 500 locations and to a $13.7 billion valuation. Mackey shares how tapping into passion and purpose can align an entrepreneur with larger waves of change. Even as traditional grocery chains cut costs and streamlined, Whole Foods focused on the in-store experience, and carefully selected locations for successful growth. Mackey shares lessons in being put to the test around politics and activist investors, and his belief in creating value for all stakeholders. Hear how and why he sold Whole Foods to Amazon, and how tapping into purpose led to a new venture, the health and wellness brand Love.Life.

Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.com

Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribe

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, it's Bob Safian. You've been hearing me as the host of rapid response in this feed for a few years now,
0:07.8	with short newsy interviews alongside the deeper dives of Masters of Scale. Well, I'm excited to share that rapid response is expanding into its own feed.
0:17.0	We'll be putting out shows twice a week, focusing on the urgent issues that business leaders are dealing with in real time.
0:24.8	So search for rapid response in your podcast player and subscribe to make sure you get all our episodes.
0:31.2	I'll see you on the other side. One thing our products are... our very colorful, crunchy, and you know that's again just using high quality vegetables with
0:47.2	delicious spices. I'm Maddie Elling, I'm one of the co-founders of Hostah Hill and we're based in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts.
0:57.0	We make a crimson crowd which is red and green cabbage with carrots and
1:02.6	radish and onions in it.
1:04.4	And that one has a beautiful red purpley color
1:07.4	that people just love.
1:09.9	We make a Dycon radish kimchi, which is cubed radish
1:12.4	radish and a kimchi, pepper paste with ginger garlic and a mushroom paste for the
1:19.1	umami flavor.
1:20.6	We have a beautiful rainbow of colors in our product line.
1:25.0	The colors really pop.
1:27.0	When we first started out, we were farming,
1:29.0	and we were cutting the cabbage by hand
1:32.0	and throwing salt on it and packing it into five gallon buckets.
1:36.0	Really small batch and all by hand.
1:42.0	When we first started in 2011, we were just doing farmers markets and we were doing all of our
1:47.3	deliveries ourselves.
1:50.3	So we quickly got very busy. Eventually our local food co-op wanted our products and then it was farm stores and then restaurants and cafes too.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WaitWhat, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WaitWhat and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.