Walter Robb’s Updates

• April 13, 2012

  Walter Robb speaks to the Detroit Economic Club about Whole Foods Market's planned store for the city; you can see the presentation at http://www.econclub.org.

• January 16, 2012

  On January 16, Walter Robb joined Kip Tindell, CEO of The Container Store, and Jonathon Sokoloff, Managing Partner of Leonard Green & Partners, to give a presentation on Conscious Capitalism at the National Retail Federation Conference. The three discussed this emerging business movement and discussed how they believe profits come from properly balancing the needs of all stakeholders — employees, suppliers, customers, community and investors. Watch the Conscious Capitalism video.

• January 10, 2012

  On Tues., January 10, Walter Robb gave a presentation at the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management. Watch the University of Toronto video.

• December 20, 2011

  On Dec. 14, Walter appeared on CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer.

• September 21, 2011

  A perspective on our online deal with Living Social...

  

  This past week, our $10 for a $20 gift card offer on Living Social received tremendous publicity for being the first-ever national grocery deal and for selling out in record time. Indeed, the offer sold at an average rate of 30 sales per second and reached as high as 80 sales per second at its peak — on the way to selling out one million coupons in about 10 hours. For a veteran apron-wearing, bricks-and-mortar retailer like me, this sale was eye-popping testimony to the speed and power of the internet and digital world. And while I am admittedly biased, I think it also showed the appeal of the Whole Foods Market brand and experience.

  The offer was also significant for a lesser known but no less important reason. Through the partnership with Living Social, we were able to link the deal directly to the site of our new Whole Kids Foundation, the nonprofit we announced this past July, with the big goal of improving children's nutrition and reversing the trend in childhood obesity. For each gift card purchased, Whole Foods Market donated 50 cents to the foundation. We have been talking about the value of natural and organic foods in the marketplace for more than 30 years, and with our customers' help have put close to 1,000 salad bars in schools over the past two years. Setting up this new foundation makes formal both our passion and our commitment as a company to make a lasting difference in the health of children. Today, nearly two thirds of kids in the U.S. are overweight, and one third is obese. Put that together with less than 20 percent of the 120,000 schools in America serving fresh vegetables as part of school meals and you can see the true nature of the upstream challenge we have with kids' health in this country.

  Through a tab on its Facebook page, the Whole Kids Foundation let customers "vote" on the percentage of donations that would go to each of its three initiatives: salad bars, school gardens, or nutrition and cooking education for teachers. With the success of the offer, our customers guaranteed that Whole Foods Market will give $500,000 dollars to those efforts.

  With this deal, we created almost 1,000 new "friends" and 300 new followers on Twitter for the Whole Kids Foundation, and our web traffic is up nicely. This only reinforces for me that many other folks out there agree this is the time to support schools and inspire families to improve children's nutrition and wellness.

  So certainly, this deal was about creating customer excitement and driving traffic. But it was also about making people happy — with a nice surprise at the end. We want to demonstrate that business can serve the broader needs of society while it also serves its customers. Through the potential of collaboration with our nonprofit partners, the power of inclusion with our customers to help guide our decisions, and the possibility of combining the two online through this deal, last Tuesday was a new day for the Whole Kids Foundation and the children it serves.

• July 28, 2011
  Co-CEO Walter Robb discusses profits, food inflation and the looming debt crisis with CNBC.

   

• February 15, 2011
  Walter Robb speaks to students at the University of Michigan School of Business.