WholeFoods Social Media Backlash. Customers Protest Outside Stores [Video]

August 22, 2009 | Willis Wee

wholefood boycott WholeFoods has enjoyed much recognition in social media; seems like the same attention is being given to WholeFoods-Boycott Facebook group, with a whopping 23,000 fans within a week.

This ‘Anti-WholeFoods’ sentiment was triggered by CEO John Mackey, as he denounced the government’s involvement in health-care, using it as an opportunity to promote WholeFoods’ positive influence on the society and how it could help reduce health problems in America.

Here are some of Mackey’s keynotes towards American health care reform.

“While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment.”

“Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals. While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?”

“Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.”

Irony? According to Huffingtonpost, it is.

For those of you who are tempted to follow Mackey’s advice (and can afford it!) be warned: not all of the foods found at WholeFoods are healthy.

As Mackey himself admitted [recently], “Basically, we used to think it was enough just to sell healthy food, but we know it is not enough. We sell all kinds of candy. We sell a bunch of junk.”

Consumers Angered

This has angered customers enough to start a Facebook group, Twitter page and blog, all with one purpose – to go against what Mackey had said.

This protest was not exclusive to the online world. A series of protest were held outside stores in Austin (their headquarters), NYC and DC.

A WholeFoods customer said that she felt betrayed by the CEO’s statement.

Company Image Belongs to No One and Everyone’s

This case has again proven the point that businesses no longer own full control of their company image. With social media, it is easy to unify and amplify consumers’ voice.

WholeFoods could be next to experience hell. Perhaps Dell could provide some useful advices in this situation.