Whole Foods Market, Inc. – Headquarters

According the company's website, founders John Macky and Renee Lawson actually lived in the first store (then called "Saferway") and took baths in the dishwasher. They later partnered with Craig Weller and Mark Skiles to create Whole Foods Market, a megastore for healthy food.

Whole Foods has grown organically (pun intended) and also through acquisitions of other regional large-space healthy-food retailers, including Florida's Bread of Life stores, Maryland's Fresh Fields, and Colorado's Wild Oates Markets. Growth has been phenomenal, fueled by the evolution of consumer tastes for healthier, purer, and sometimes just tastier foods. This increase in demand has coincided with a consumer willingness to pay premium prices for organic or more natural food, which has allowed Whole Foods to maintain profit margins that are the envy of mainstream grocery chains and many other retailers.

Near-death experience. In spite of its amazing growth trajectory, Whole Foods has had it share of problems, including a 1981 flood that wiped out the uninsured company's inventory; controversy over its acquisition of Wild Oats Markets; and the recent entry of mass-market grocery chain Krogers into the organic and healthy food segment, as well as discounters Wal-Mart, Kmart, and Costco.

Whole Foods probably doesn't need a mission statement. Most customers get it or they wouldn't pay premium prices for the products and experience. Their stated values are about the value of values — "We offer a place for you to shop where value is inseparable from values."

Whole Foods has implemented a policy requiring all its suppliers to label genetically modified (GMO) content in any food products sold in its USA and Canadian stores by 2018, with the stated premise that customers have a right to full transparency about the food they purchase.

Common complaints in the healthy and premium foods industry

• "Green turfing": over-marketing or exaggerating of the green aspects of a business's products, services, or practices to justify higher prices.
• Misleading health or quality representations such as the use of "natural" in foods that simply don't contain inorganic matter but which are not particularly healthy.
• Prices that can greatly exceed the cost of similar quality food at non-premium retailers.
• GMO and non-organic products without proper labeling. (See above.)
• Food products that are high in sugar, fat, or are otherwise unhealthy but sold with the false "halo effect" of being available in a health food store.
• Overcharging by false weight calculations, and resale of leftover foods through buffets.
• Failure to verify store-made or store-label food sources for quality and organic or non-GMO content.