John Mackey

So Whole Foods, in fact, Whole Foods drove a lot of the entire innovation of the supermarket industry for a long period of time.

But then what happened over time, and this trend began before I retired, we had hired professionals and the professionals were trying to, I'm talking about a lot of MBAs, and they were trying to make Whole Foods more efficient.

Cut our costs so we could lower our prices.

Right.

And the trade-off when you do that is that you centralize more things and you take power away from the regional people so they won't make mistakes and have a lot of waste.

But the trade-off is you get less innovation.

You're less creativity.

People are less empowered.

That trend accelerated under Amazon.

And after I left, it's really accelerated because I was kind of the thing that was holding it back, saying, hey, we're losing our innovative edge.

We're not really.

We're just doing the same thing over and over again.

That's what most retailers do.

So I do think Whole Foods has changed.

But, you know, I didn't know how to stop it, actually, to tell you the truth.

Well, once Amazon acquired the company, I didn't have the power to do it any longer.

Most people don't know that backstory.

In my book, The Whole Story, which I'm going to pitch right now, I tell the whole story of Whole Foods.

It's also my personal spiritual journey.

It's a memoir.