John Mackey

He was born and raised in Houston, TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry, and on his personal website describes a middle-class childhood in the 1950s and 1960s. Fast Company’s article of July 2023 states that he would turn 70 on August 15, 2023, and in a blog post dated August 15, 2023 he wrote that he was “celebrating 70 trips around the sun today”; the Newsmakers biography published by Gale gives his birth as 1953 in Texas.⁠[1][2][3][4]

Texas Monthly wrote in 2017 that he grew up in Houston’s well-to-do Memorial neighborhood, eating mid-century American staples such as TV dinners and macaroni and cheese.⁠[5]

His father, Bill Mackey (William S. Mackey in the Newsmakers entry), was an accounting professor at Rice UniversityRice UniversityRice University is a university in Houston, Texas, United States, established with the fortune of William Marsh Rice (1816–1900).Open the full entry until John was about 10 and then moved into corporate work; in a blog post of January 2023 he wrote that his father later became chief executive of Lifemark, a public hospital management company, until it was sold in 1984, and the Newsmakers entry likewise states that his father later became chief executive of a hospital-management company. His mother, Margaret Mackey, was a homemaker. He has a brother and a sister.⁠[1][6][4][7]

In a blog post of October 2024 he wrote that both of his parents grew up during the Great Depression; his father was 20 when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, joined the military soon afterward and married his mother shortly after that, and after World War II the couple bought a home in the suburbs of Houston to raise their children.⁠[7]

In the same post he wrote that his mother grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in Bastrop, Texas, a small, traditional Baptist town; against the norms of the town she smoked, drank, gambled and danced, and she was exceptionally intelligent, college-educated and placed a high value on higher education, but as a wife, mother and homemaker never got to pursue her own passions. He wrote: “I have her to thank for my rebellious spirit.” In the 2026 interview he said that his mother left the town for Houston, attended Rice University and earned a degree, and that he was named after her father, who was a doctor.⁠[7][8][8]

In the interview he recalled that his parents gave their children no allowance and instead assigned prices to chores such as washing dishes, mowing lawns and raking leaves, so that anyone who wanted money did the jobs; he said that from about the age of 10 he worked to buy comic books, later records, and to save for a car, and took jobs as soon as he could legally work, because to him “money meant freedom.”⁠[8][8]

On his personal website he writes that as a boy he loved sports of all kinds, especially baseball and basketball, and that he was rather small and met his share of bullies. Texas Monthly wrote that he played basketball in high school with Jim Sud, whom it describes as one of the original investors in SaferWay and as Whole Foods Market’s executive vice president of growth and business development.⁠[1][5]

In the interview he said that what mattered most to his mother was that her children rise in society and be seen as respectable; his elder sister earned a master’s degree in French literature and a doctorate in psychology and went on to teach. He said that he himself scored very high on IQ and aptitude tests and earned A’s in subjects that interested him, though not in those that did not.⁠[8][8]

The Newsmakers entry states that he finished high school in 1971 and attended three schools between about 1971 and 1978, among them Trinity University and the University of Texas at Austin. Texas Monthly wrote that he shuttled for about six years between Trinity University in San Antonio and the University of Texas at Austin, studying religion and philosophy, and never earned a degree; on his personal website he writes that he took mostly elective courses and left with about 120 credits and no degree.⁠[4][5][1]

Fortune wrote in June 2024 that at 19, while a student at Trinity University, he took LSD with friends, an experience that pulled him away from his mother’s plan for him to become a doctor or a lawyer; he began reading about Eastern religions and thinkers and later studied philosophy at the University of Texas, searching for the meaning of life. In the 2026 interview he said that he had used psychedelics before he started the company, for spiritual exploration and not as therapy.⁠[9][8]

In a 2026 interview with Free Society, a Cato Institute publication, he recalled that his first thought on reaching college was that he could eat as much ice cream as he wanted, that he later began studying nutrition, which he described as a shift in consciousness, and that his parents’ generation did not shop at natural food stores and considered them crazy.⁠[10]

In 1976, in his early twenties, he moved into Prana House, a vegetarian housing co-op in Austin; he had not been a vegetarian before. He writes that he was drawn by its counterculture atmosphere, that the residents took turns cooking, that he found he liked beans, vegetables and buckwheat, that he eventually became the co-op’s food buyer, and that he stayed mostly vegetarian, with occasional fish, for the next 27 years. There he met Renee Lawson, who became his girlfriend. In his 2021 letter to employees he wrote that he discovered his higher purpose in 1976 while living at Prana House.⁠[11][1][5][12]

The same Fortune article states that several years later, at a New Age gathering in Austin, he took MDMA and concluded that love is the most important thing in life, which he says led him to want to build a more loving business culture; afterward he became devoted to A Course in Miracles and took up serious meditation.⁠[9]

In the interview he joked that his résumé would list only busboy, dishwasher, camp counselor, assistant manager of a natural food store and chief executive of Whole Foods Market. Texas Monthly wrote that he worked for about six months at Good Food Company, a health-food store in Austin. He recalled that he loved the job and liked dealing with customers and co-workers whose way of life resembled his own, and that one day at the store he thought, “I could do this the rest of my life”; back at Prana House he put the idea of opening their own store to Renee Lawson, who agreed at once. Had she poured cold water on the idea, he said, that might have been the end of it.⁠[8][8][8][8][5]

In 1978 he and his then girlfriend, Renee Lawson, opened a natural foods store in Austin named SaferWay (his personal website spells it Safer Way); Encyclopaedia BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry and the Newsmakers entry give her name as Renee Lawson Hardy. His personal website and Texas Monthly both state that the two raised about $45,000 from family and friends; the Newsmakers entry states that the start-up money came from a small inheritance of Renee Lawson Hardy’s, $20,000 that he borrowed from his father, and several thousand dollars from other relatives and friends. In a 2024 interview he said that he had no money when he was 24; in a blog post of October 2026 he wrote that he was 25 when Safer Way opened its doors in 1978, and Texas Monthly likewise gives his age as 25 when he launched the store that became Whole Foods.⁠[1][5][4][13][14][15]

Texas Monthly wrote that the store occupied an old Victorian house at Rio Grande and Eighth Street and that the couple, evicted from their apartment for using it as a stockroom, moved in above the store and showered with a dishwasher hose. The Newsmakers entry states that the building had three stories, with a health-food restaurant on the second floor and the couple living on the third, and quotes his recollection that there was no shower and that the two took showers in the restaurant’s Hobart dishwasher.⁠[5][4]

Inc. magazine wrote in 2015 that the store sold nothing containing sugar, caffeine, alcohol or white flour and lost half of its capital in its first year. His conclusion: “If your philosophy is too Puritan, you can’t do enough business to be successful.”⁠[16][1]

In the 2026 interview he said that when he raised the money he had six months of experience in a natural food store, no business background and no business classes from his university years, and that friends and family were willing to entrust their money to “this young kid and his girlfriend” on the strength of his enthusiasm alone.⁠[8]

Texas Monthly wrote that SaferWay averaged about $10,000 a week in sales. In the interview he said that Mrs. Gooch’s in Los Angeles was doing ten times as much in stores that were not much bigger, selling fresh meat and running large produce departments, which convinced him that he needed a bigger location; he also said that SaferWay, in an old house in a residential neighborhood with no cars going by, was a terrible site for a store. He recalled that he had read in a trade publication about the few natural food supermarkets then operating, such as Bread & Circus in Boston and Mrs. Gooch’s in Los Angeles, went to study them and made friends with their owners, and then made the case to investors that the model was already working in other cities.⁠[5][8][8][8][8][8]

In 1980 SaferWay merged with Clarksville Natural Grocery, run by Craig Weller and Mark Skiles, and on September 20 of that year the four opened the first Whole Foods Market in Austin with a staff of 19. Texas Monthly wrote that the store, on Tenth Street, measured 10,500 square feet and within six months was the highest-volume natural-food store in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry.⁠[1][17][13][5]

The Newsmakers entry gives the name of the store that opened in 1980 as Whole Foods Natural Market and states that it sold the usual health-food items but also foods that other health-food stores avoided, such as sugar, coffee and red meat. Speaking in 2015 about the name and the positioning, he said that they had decided not to run a judgmental store but to sell the foods that his generation wanted to buy, while keeping the focus on organic food and the ban on artificial flavorings, colorings and preservatives.⁠[4][16]

In the interview he recalled that the site of the first Whole Foods Market belonged to a lawyer from Houston, who at first thought that “a hippie food store” could not work and said that there were not enough hippies in the whole world to fill it, but who, after hearing him out, laughed, agreed to the lease and said that the young man reminded him of himself when young.⁠[8][8]

In the interview he said that the first store was very profitable and that his co-founder Mark Skiles saw no need to do anything more, whereas he wanted to open more stores; the new stores started slowly, the company was for a time losing money again, his partner was angry, and Mark Skiles was later bought out. The other co-founder, Craig Weller, he said, wanted the business to grow and predicted, when the company had just entered CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry, that there would be stores all over America and that some day there would be one even in Kansas City; when the company did open in Kansas City, he telephoned Craig Weller, who by his recollection had retired by then, to say so.⁠[8][8][8][8][8]

On Memorial Day 1981 Austin was flooded, nine months, by his account, after the first Whole Foods Market opened; the Newsmakers entry states that the shelves stood under about eight feet of water. The company history on the Whole Foods Market website calls it the worst flood in 70 years and states that the store had no insurance; the profile on the website of the Institute for Developmental Philosophy calls it Austin’s worst flood in history and states that the original store was almost bankrupted.⁠[1][8][4][17][18]

In a 2024 interview he said that the flood destroyed the equipment and the inventory, that customers, team members, suppliers and investors came to help, and that a banker personally guaranteed a loan of US$100,000. His personal website and the Whole Foods Market website both state that the store reopened 28 days later; the Newsmakers entry says about a month later, and the 2024 interview says 30 days. Speaking in the 2026 interview of a customer and neighbor who turned up unasked to help with the cleanup, he said that this was when he began to discover “stakeholders,” the people who care about a business.⁠[14][1][17][4][8][8]

His personal website states that between 1982 and 1989 the company opened a total of seven stores, those in new cities being Houston (Shepard, 1984), Dallas (Greenville, 1986) and New Orleans (Esplanade, 1987). In the interview he said that the company opened its first store in Houston in 1984 and that within a couple of years it was one of the highest-volume stores in the natural foods business. The list of acquisitions on his personal website begins with Bluebonnet Natural Foods in October 1986 and Whole Food Company in May 1988; in the interview he said that Whole Food Company was based in New Orleans and that its founder later helped the company start up in Northern California and served for five years as president of Whole Foods Market before leaving in 1998. The Newsmakers entry states that during the 1980s the company expanded into Houston, Dallas, LouisianaLouisianaLouisiana is a state in the southern United States on the Gulf of Mexico, bordered by Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas; its capital is Baton Rouge and its largest city is New Orleans. It entered the Union on April 30, 1812, as the 18th state, and had a population of 4,657,757 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, North CarolinaNorth CarolinaNorth Carolina is a state in the South Atlantic region of the United States; its capital is Raleigh and its largest city is Charlotte. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on November 21, 1789, becoming the 12th state, and its population in the 2020 census was 10,439,388.Open the full entry and northern California.⁠[1][8][8][19][4]

In the interview he said that natural foods retailers from different parts of the country formed the Natural Foods Network: they met, brought their financial statements and traded them, and did not regard one another as competitors, since each had its own territory; a meeting was usually hosted by one company around a newly opened store, and Whole Foods Market hosted one in Houston after its store there opened. Some people in the industry, he said, also formed a “wild man’s group” that went on adventures together in AlaskaAlaskaAlaska is the largest U.S. state by area and borders Canada to the east; its capital is Juneau and its largest city is Anchorage. Alaska was admitted to the Union on January 3, 1959, as the 49th state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 733,391.Open the full entry and in Yosemite.⁠[8][8][8][8]

The Newsmakers entry states that he wanted a workplace modeled on a commune, with shared resources and a common goal, and that in the 1980s he studied Japanese management and adopted a team-based system: each store had eight teams, new hires went through a month’s trial after which team members voted, with two-thirds approval required, on whether they stayed, and raises and bonuses were tied to team performance; the company-level National Leadership Team had 24 members, and he rarely overruled it.⁠[4]

The Whole Foods Market website states that the company’s Declaration of Interdependence was first written in 1985 by 60 team members who volunteered their time and was revised in 1988, 1992, 1997 and 2018.⁠[20]

In the interview he said that he last saw his mother in 1987, when she was partly paralyzed and bedridden after a stroke; she begged him to promise that he would go back to school and get his degree, saying that with so much potential he was nothing but a grocer, and he answered that he was building a business, would never go back to school, and might some day be given an honorary doctorate by a university, which, he said, did later happen. She died about two weeks after that visit, he said, believing that her son had wasted his life, and the two were still estranged; he was 34 at the time.⁠[8][8][8][8]

Inc. magazine’s 2015 article likewise states that in 1987 his mother, on her deathbed, asked him to promise to return to college and finish his degree and that he did not, and it quotes him: “My mom was not really proud of what I was doing, so I wasn’t close to her.” On his blog he writes that his relationship with his mother was complicated and that he was closer to his father; he also writes that his mother died of heart disease.⁠[16][7][11]

In the interview he said that he still talks with his parents in his mind, asking their forgiveness and forgiving them; a podcast host who had read his memoir, he said, once suggested that his rebelliousness came from his mother more than from his father, a reading that he came to think was right and that he marked with a small ceremony of his own to thank her.⁠[8][8][8][8]

In his blog post The Rebel in Me, of October 2024, he wrote that he rarely talks about his mother and that the post grew out of a question about her when he was a guest on Rich Roll’s podcast; a post of January 2025 places that conversation in the preceding September.⁠[7][21]

His personal website states that in 1989 Whole Foods Market opened in Palo Alto, California, its first move to the West Coast, and, in the same part of the timeline, that the company sold 34 percent of the business for $4.5 million. In the Free Society interview he said that after a visit to the Bay Area with a girlfriend he decided to expand beyond Texas and that in 1989 he raised venture capital, which paid for the stores in the Bay Area.⁠[1][17][10]

In the 2026 interview he said that the venture capital was not much but was enough to take the company into Northern California; the venture capitalists owned 34 percent of the company while the founding investors still held a majority, another round would have given the venture capitalists control, which he did not want, and so the company needed to go public. Once the company had public money, he said, it no longer needed “those hitchhikers.”⁠[8][8]

He recalled that one venture capitalist who did not invest gave as his reason that they were just “a bunch of hippies selling food to other hippies,” that the market was not big, and that if it turned out to be big the large supermarket chains would put them out of business; the remark, he said, left him with a slow burn to prove the man wrong.⁠[8][8]

The move into Northern California, he said, was the first rupture in the Natural Foods Network: Mrs. Gooch’s felt that California was its territory, the companies stopped sharing financial information, and some of the other owners feared that Whole Foods Market would come into their markets. He said that he never competed directly against these friends’ stores, that there were markets the company stayed out of for years, and that it later entered them by acquisition.⁠[8][8][8][8]

The acquisition list on his personal website records the purchase of Wellspring Grocery in November 1991. Supermarket News wrote in 2005 that the 1991 deal brought in Lex Alexander’s two Wellspring Grocery stores, in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and that after joining the company he built its private-label program; the company history on the Whole Foods Market website places Wellspring Grocery in Durham and lists Lex and Anne Alexander with it. In the interview he said that the deal was a key step before going public.⁠[19][22][17][8]

In January 1992 Whole Foods Market went public on NasdaqNasdaqNasdaq is an exchange operator and financial technology company headquartered in New York. It runs The Nasdaq Stock Market and other markets and provides capital markets technology, regulatory technology, and data and index services. Founded in 1971, it combined with OMX AB in 2008, and in March 2026 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved its rules for trading tokenized securities.Open the full entry under the ticker WFMI; his personal website states that the shares were priced at $17 and that the offering raised $28 million.⁠[4][1]

In a blog post of January 23, 2023, The Day of Our IPO, he wrote that the initial public offering had taken place 31 years earlier to the day; the company then had 12 stores, the venture capital money was gone, and he did not want another venture round that would give the venture capitalists majority control. He wrote that the offering valued the company at $100 million, that it was “one of the happiest days of my life,” and that the purchases of Bread & Circus and Mrs. Gooch’s that followed were “the two most important acquisitions we ever made.”⁠[23][1]

In the interview he said that his father, who had lived through the Great Depression and always expected another one, got him to sell stock in the initial public offering and urged him to keep selling afterward; he trusted his father and did so, he said, and in retrospect it was a mistake, since he would be far wealthier had he followed his own instincts and held on.⁠[8][8]

The list goes on to Bread & Circus in October 1992, Mrs. Gooch’s in September 1993, Cana Foods (BOL) and Unicorn Village in February 1995, Oak Street Market in December 1995 and Fresh Fields Market in August 1996. The company history on the Whole Foods Market website lists Anthony and Susan Harnett with Bread & Circus (Brookline, MassachusettsMassachusettsMassachusetts (officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital and largest city is Boston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on February 6, 1788, the sixth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 7,029,917.Open the full entry) and Sandy Gooch and Dan Volland with Mrs. Gooch’s (West Los Angeles). In the interview he said that the company paid $28 million for Bread & Circus and that, because the seller could not cash out his stock until the company’s secondary offering, he ended up with $30 million; once that price was public, many other owners realized what their businesses were worth and approached the company themselves, among them an owner in FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry who sold in just that way.⁠[19][17][8][8]

The point of the acquisitions, he said, was to provide a platform in a new region, since building a local team from nothing is very expensive: the company started from scratch only in places such as Texas, Northern California and Chicago, and in Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, D.C., Florida and North Carolina it got its footing by acquisition, obtaining for example six stores in Boston, seven in Los Angeles and two in Florida; of the roughly 550 stores today, he estimated, perhaps 25 are acquired stores that still exist and have not been relocated.⁠[8][8]

He said that the company gave stock options to everyone who worked there and that many team members became millionaires as a result; he recalled an annual gathering at which hundreds of employees gave him a standing ovation and said to him that they had bought a house, that their children could now go to college, or that they could retire.⁠[8][8]

His father was one of the original investors in Whole Foods Market, a board member for many years, his most important business mentor and the best man at his wedding. In a blog post of January 2023 he wrote that for the first sixteen years of the company’s existence he consulted his father before making any important business decision, and that after the company went public in 1992 his father favored growing slowly. In 1994 he asked his father to resign from the board. Inc. magazine wrote that the public offering had opened a period of rapid expansion, that father and son often argued over it, and that he thought his father too conservative; he called the request “The hardest thing I’ve ever done.”⁠[7][6][16]

In the 2026 interview he said that he was 40 at the time and his father 72, and that his father had been along for the ride for 15 years; he said to his father that he did not want the quarrels to tear their relationship apart and suggested that he sell half of his stock for security and keep the other half to watch the company grow. A year later, he said, the stock price had doubled, so that the half his father had kept was worth as much as the whole holding had been before the sale. He also said that his father made more money from Whole Foods Market than from his own business.⁠[8][8][8][8][8]

In his blog post of October 2024 he wrote that his father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease a year later; in the 2026 interview he said that the diagnosis came “a couple years later” and that, looking back, his father’s new conservatism was already an effect of the illness, which he did not know at the time. Inc. magazine wrote that his father forgave him a year later, and his blog post of January 2023 likewise says that the two were reconciled within a year; in the interview he said that a few years afterward his father said that he had made the right decision and that he was proud of him.⁠[7][8][8][16][6]

For these years the acquisition list shows Bread of Life in April 1997, Granary Market in August 1997, Merchant of Vino in December 1997, Good Natures Grocery and Nature’s Heartland in April 1999, Natural Abilities (Food 4 Thought) in February 2000 and Harry’s Farmers Market in October 2001. In a blog post of March 2023 he wrote that Whole Foods Market completed more than 20 acquisitions during his time and that all but one, Amrion, were successful; the profile on the website of the Institute for Developmental Philosophy puts the number of acquisitions he led at 19. The company history on the Whole Foods Market website also records two Boulder companies that joined in 1997, Amrion and Allegro Coffee.⁠[19][24][18][17]

His personal website states that by 1999 he had moved to Boulder with his wife, Deborah, to work on wholepeople.com, an online business formed by merging wholefoods.com with Amrion, a vitamin company acquired in 1997, which raised $30 million from venture capitalists. The venture, he writes, was too expensive to operate and came before the market was ready; it failed, and the company exited the business and took the write-off.⁠[1]

The page for the book Conscious Leadership on his personal website states that its introduction opens in January 2001, when he flew to Florida for a Whole Foods Market board meeting at which his job and his future were at stake.⁠[25]

In 2002 he took a five-month sabbatical and hiked the 2,160-mile Appalachian Trail; Texas Monthly describes the hike as running from Georgia to MaineMaineMaine is a state in the northeastern United States, bordered by Canada and New Hampshire; its capital is Augusta and its largest city is Portland. It entered the Union on March 15, 1820, as the 23rd state, and had a population of 1,362,359 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry. He writes that his passion for long-distance, ultralight hiking dates from this hike and that before setting out he gave himself the trail name “Strider,” after Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, which he has used ever since.⁠[1][5][26][27]

In a blog post of November 2024 he wrote that in 2002 the team members of the store in Madison, WisconsinWisconsinWisconsin is a state in the north-central United States; its capital is Madison and its largest city is Milwaukee. Wisconsin was admitted to the Union on May 29, 1848, as the 30th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 5,893,718 residents.Open the full entry, voted to unionize; the store was about 150 miles from the regional support team in Chicago and was seldom visited by regional leaders, and only after the vote did the company discover that it was poorly managed. The vote, he wrote, was a wake-up call: over the following year he visited every one of the company’s stores, then more than 150, and spoke with thousands of team members and store leaders, and the company then introduced better health benefits, a more flexible dress code and higher pay in its other stores, changes that could not be applied in Madison while union negotiations were under way.⁠[28]

He wrote that on November 12, 2003 the Madison team members voted to decertify the union and afterward received the same pay increases and benefits as other stores. In the same post he wrote “I am not anti-union.” and described unions as competitors for team members’ loyalty, comparable to retail rivals such as Trader Joe’s, WalmartWalmartWalmart is an American retailer founded by Sam Walton in 1962, with businesses spanning physical retail, membership warehouse clubs, e-commerce and related services. Its businesses include Walmart and Sam’s Club, and it has expanded into other markets through international investments; its shares trade on Nasdaq under the ticker WMT.Open the full entry, HEB and Costco; he also argued that the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, by outlawing company unions that include management, makes relations between labor and management in the United States adversarial. He wrote the post to clarify his views after a conversation with Michael Moynihan on Honestly, the podcast of Bari WeissBari WeissBari Weiss is an American journalist and editor, the founder of the news outlet The Free Press, and editor-in-chief of CBS News since October 2025.Open the full entry, in the fall of 2024.⁠[28]

In 2003 Lauren Ornelas, an animal rights activist with VIVAUSA, challenged his understanding of the welfare of livestock and prompted him to research the question, after which he became an ethical vegan and helped create the Global Animal Partnership, whose rating scale measures the humane treatment of farm animals; in 2024 he said that Whole Foods Market had established a five-step animal welfare program, and the profile on the website of the Institute for Developmental Philosophy calls Whole Foods Market the first national grocer to set and implement humane treatment standards for the farm animals behind the meat it sells. The Newsmakers entry traces the episode to a challenge from an animal-rights activist at a stockholders’ meeting and states that, on learning that a duck supplier kept its birds indoors, he urged the farm to build ponds. Fortune wrote that his move to veganism was also influenced by PETA and other activists who had targeted Whole Foods Market over a supplier involved in foie gras production.⁠[11][1][19][14][18][4][9]

He writes that in 2005 he read The China Study, by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell, which strongly affected his views on health; later his good friend Bruce FriedrichBruce FriedrichBruce Friedrich is the founder and president of The Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit founded in 2016 to advance research and industry development of alternative proteins such as plant-based and cultivated meat. He previously spent 13 years at the animal rights organization PETA and is the author of Meat (2026).Open the full entry gave him Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, by Caldwell B. Esselstyn, which, he writes, caught his attention largely because of his family’s history of heart disease: his father had it, and his brother and sister both struggle with it as well; for several years afterward he followed its low-fat, whole-foods, plant-based approach. He also writes that through the grocery business he came to know Rip Esselstyn, the doctor’s son, and read and liked his book The Engine 2 Diet.⁠[11]

He describes his own diet as close to “plant-strong,” that is, whole foods and plants with no oil, no refined sugar and no excessive sodium, and writes that this is hard to keep up fully when traveling or eating out with family and friends; in the same post, of September 2024, he wrote that he had just turned 71 and felt fantastic. Texas Monthly wrote in 2017 that he ate vegan and consumed no oils.⁠[11][5]

In 2004 Whole Foods Market opened its second store in New York City, in the basement of the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. In the interview he said that the store was in a basement with no parking and required a large capital investment, that the decision was a very difficult one, and that from its opening it has been the company’s highest-volume store; counting from the first Whole Foods Market in 1980, he said, the conventional supermarkets and the media paid the company no attention for more than twenty years and began to take it seriously only after this store opened.⁠[5][8][8][8]

In the 2026 Free Society interview he said that in its first 25 years the company never opened a store that failed, and that it later closed one unsuccessful store.⁠[10]

In the interview he said that his father died in 2004.⁠[8]

The acquisition list shows Fresh & Wild Holdings in January 2004 and Whole Grocer in January 2006. The company history on the Whole Foods Market website places Fresh & Wild in London.⁠[19][17]

His personal website states that he co-founded Whole Planet Foundation (2005), Whole Kids Foundation (2011) and Whole Cities Foundation (2015). In a blog post of October 2025 marking the foundation’s twentieth anniversary he recalled sitting, twenty years earlier, in a circle with about ten women in a small village in the Guatemalan highlands; they were among the first recipients of microcredit loans from the newly launched Whole Planet Foundation and talked mainly about how they would use their next infusion of capital to grow their businesses. He wrote that 1.3 million people had been empowered through the foundation’s work and that nothing Whole Foods Market had done raised the morale of the organization more.⁠[1][29]

The profile on the website of the Institute for Developmental Philosophy states that Whole Planet Foundation has helped more than 1.5 million people in 57 countries through microcredit, and that in 2007 he launched the Local Producer Loan Program, committing $10 million a year in low-interest loans. In a blog post of September 2025 he wrote that the company had issued more than $34 million in low-interest loans to suppliers and, through Whole Planet Foundation, more than $100 million in microcredit loans to women entrepreneurs.⁠[18][30]

His personal website lists Total Health Immersion, a health and wellness program for team members, among the programs he inspired; Texas Monthly describes it as a week-long intensive. In 2023 he said that more than 4,000 people had taken part.⁠[19][5][2]

The Whole Foods Market annual report for fiscal 2009 states that he voluntarily set his annual salary at $1 and receives no cash bonuses or stock option awards. The profile on the website of the Institute for Developmental Philosophy dates the pay cut to 2006 and states that he set a salary cap for all of the company’s executives; Supermarket News states that he reduced his salary to $1 a year in 2007, and Texas Monthly that in 2007 he eliminated his salary and his stock options and that for the previous ten years the only compensation he had accepted from the company was a salary of $1 a year. Texas Monthly wrote in 2017 that his net worth was around $100 million and quoted him: “I have enough, and I don’t lust after more.”⁠[31][18][5][32]

From 1999 he posted anonymously on the stock message boards of Yahoo FinanceYahoo FinanceYahoo Finance is a Yahoo brand offering financial news and investing tools, including market news, market data and video programming; Yahoo describes it as the No. 1 financial news site in the U.S.Open the full entry under the name “rahodeb”; The Register wrote that the name is an anagram of that of his wife, Deborah. Chain Store Age wrote that for years he used the alias to praise Whole Foods Market and to criticize Wild Oats Markets, then a rival. The Newsmakers entry puts the period of posting at about eight years and dates the revelation to 2006; The Register and Chain Store Age place his apology and the inquiry by the U.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionU.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionThe U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is the federal securities regulator of the United States. Created during the Great Depression by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and led by five commissioners, it has a three-part mission of protecting investors, maintaining fair, orderly and efficient markets, and facilitating capital formation.Open the full entry that followed the disclosure in July 2007. The Register wrote that one post, in March 2007, said that Wild Oats faced possible bankruptcy; the postings became known when a document filed in the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit quoted “rahodeb.”⁠[33][34][35][4][36]

On July 17, 2007 he apologized to shareholders in a brief statement on the company’s website, calling his anonymous participation in online financial message boards an “error in judgment”; on the same day the company’s directors announced a special committee to conduct an internal investigation of the postings. Chain Store Age wrote on October 8, 2007 that the board had completed its inquiry, that the special committee, assisted by independent counsel, had given its findings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and that the board reaffirmed its support for him; the article adds that when he acknowledged the postings in July he explained that the comments did not always reflect his personal views and that he was sometimes playing “devil’s advocate.”⁠[33][37]

Whole Foods Market said in July 2007 that it had received an inquiry from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission about the anonymous postings; CBS NewsCBS NewsCBS News is the news organization of the U.S. CBS system, part of Paramount, providing news coverage through television, the web and streaming. Its history extends from radio newsgathering to television and digital platforms; its signature programs include CBS Evening News, 60 Minutes and Face the Nation, and CBS News 24/7 is its streaming news service.Open the full entry wrote that while the inquiry lasted the company’s lawyers had him stop all Internet activity, that the commission wanted to know whether he had tried to manipulate the stock of Wild Oats before the acquisition, and that he said that he had written little about Wild Oats and had posted nothing about it in the period before the deal. Chain Store Age wrote on April 28, 2008 that the company had announced the previous Friday that the commission’s staff had concluded its probe and recommended that no action be taken. His blog resumed on May 21, 2008, when he wrote: “My mistake here was one of judgment -- not ethics.” In the life timeline on his personal website he writes that the commission launched an investigation of him over his postings on the Yahoo!YahooYahoo is an internet brand founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in 1994, with email, search, news, finance, sports, and advertising businesses. It developed from a web directory into a portal, underwent major acquisitions and security incidents, and sold its operating business in 2017, when the original listed company became Altaba. Apollo-managed funds acquired the brand’s operating business in 2021. Yahoo launched the AI answer service Scout in 2026.Open the full entry financial bulletin boards.⁠[35][34][1]

Press releases of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) state that Whole Foods Market and Wild Oats Markets signed their merger agreement on February 21, 2007 and put the value of the acquisition at approximately $670 million. On August 28, 2007 Whole Foods Market completed the acquisition; the company’s annual report states that it paid about $596.2 million in cash, funded in part by a $700 million five-year term loan entered into the same day, and that Wild Oats then had 109 stores in 23 states and British Columbia, Canada.⁠[38][39][31]

Before the deal closed, the FTC filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on June 6, 2007, seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction, and a judge issued a temporary restraining order on June 7; on June 28 the commission, by a vote of 5–0, issued an administrative complaint alleging that the acquisition would eliminate competition among premium natural and organic supermarkets. On August 16, 2007 the district court denied the preliminary injunction; on July 29, 2008 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed that ruling and remanded the case, finding that the FTC had shown a likelihood of success on the merits, and on November 21, 2008 it denied Whole Foods Market’s petition for rehearing en banc. On remand the FTC asked for a hold-separate order, the rebranding of the former Wild Oats stores, and the appointment of a trustee or special master to run the former Wild Oats assets.⁠[39][38][40][31]

The administrative hearing had been set for April 6, 2009. On January 28, 2009 the FTC withdrew the case from adjudication to consider a proposed consent agreement; the parties reached a settlement on March 6, 2009, the commission voting 4–0 to accept the proposed consent order, and the public comment period ended on April 6. The case page on the FTC website lists the final decision and order under May 29, 2009; the company’s annual report gives June 1, 2009 as the date of final approval by the FTC’s commissioners.⁠[31][38][40]

In announcing the settlement the FTC stated that Whole Foods Market was to sell 32 stores in 17 geographic markets (13 operating and 19 closed) together with the related Wild Oats intellectual property, including the brand, through a divestiture trustee with six months to sell to buyers approved by the FTC. The company’s annual report states that the trustee was to sell, by September 8, 2009, the leases and related assets of 19 non-operating former Wild Oats stores, the leases and fixed assets of 12 operating former Wild Oats stores and of one operating Whole Foods Market store, and the Wild Oats trademarks and other intellectual property; for six operating stores, two non-operating stores and the trademarks the period was later extended to March 8, 2010, an extension that the FTC’s case page lists under October 30, 2009. The company was allowed to keep seven operating stores with no further obligation to divest. As of September 27, 2009 the company still operated 53 former Wild Oats stores, substantially all of which had been rebranded as Whole Foods Market stores. The FTC’s case page shows that on June 18, 2010 the commission approved proposed sales of stores to buyers including Trader Joe’s East, Luberski and A-M Holdings and denied a proposed sale to Topco Associates.⁠[38][31][41][40]

The company disclosed FTC-related legal costs of about $2.5 million in fiscal 2008 and about $14.7 million in fiscal 2009, and about $4.8 million of asset impairments tied to the settlement. The annual report also discloses a putative class action, Kottaras, served on October 27, 2008 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging that the merger violated federal antitrust laws; as of the report the case was in its preliminary stages and no loss had been accrued.⁠[31][41]

In a 2024 interview he said that during the financial crisis of 2008 the stock of Whole Foods Market fell by 90 percent and that the company raised friendly money to deter a hostile takeover; shareholder activists appeared all the same, and sold out quickly once the stock had risen. The company’s earnings release of November 2009 states that it had issued $425 million of Series A Preferred Stock to Leonard Green & Partners the year before, that on October 23, 2009 it announced that it was exercising its right of redemption, with a redemption date of November 27, 2009, and that the holder was expected to convert the preferred stock before then into about 29.7 million common shares; the annual report dates the issue of the preferred stock to December 2, 2008 and states that the holders converted all of it into about 29.7 million common shares on November 26, 2009.⁠[14][41][31]

In the same interview he said that the company could have and should have lowered prices as its stock price climbed back, which he called “my single biggest regret as the CEO”; doing so, he believes, would have allowed the company to remain independent.⁠[14]

The annual report states that as of September 27, 2009 the company operated 284 stores, 273 of them in 38 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, six in Canada and five in the United Kingdom, and that sales in fiscal 2009 were about $8.0 billion. It gives his age as 56 and his tenure with the company as 31 years, and states that he had been chairman and chief executive officer since 1980.⁠[31]

In 2009 he published an op-ed in The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is a U.S. news publication founded in 1889, with a focus on business, finance and economics. It is published by Dow Jones, part of News Corp.Open the full entry that opposed President Barack ObamaBarack ObamaBarack Obama (born 1961) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017, the first African American to hold the office. He was previously an Illinois state senator and a U.S. senator from Illinois, and he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.Open the full entry’s health-care plan and argued for free-market forces in health-care reform; the article drew wide publicity and a boycott of Whole Foods Market. In August of that year CtW Investment Group, a shareholder group that works with union pension funds, called for his removal as chief executive, saying that the article had damaged the company’s reputation.⁠[42][43][32]

Looking back in 2026, he said that the article turned the media against Whole Foods Market and against him, and he called the years from the early 1980s to about 2009 the best period of his career.⁠[10]

On December 24, 2009 he announced on his blog that he was voluntarily giving up the title of chairman of Whole Foods Market while remaining chief executive and a director, writing that the chairman’s title was merely a title with no authority or responsibilities; the company disclosed the change in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission the same day. John B. Elstrott, a director since 1995 and lead director since January 2001, became chairman, and the position of lead director was eliminated. Chain Store Age and Supermarket News state that he had been chairman since 1978.⁠[43][42][32]

The company said that for three years running it had received shareholder proposals to separate the roles of chairman and chief executive and that shareholders had voted them down each time. CtW Investment Group had been calling for him to step down as chairman since the pseudonymous postings came to light in 2007; The Austin Chronicle wrote that the group then held about 885,000 shares of the company and that its research director, Richard Clayton, called the change “long overdue” and said that the pressure would continue.⁠[32][42][43]

The Austin Chronicle wrote that The New Yorker, in its issue of January 4, 2010, ran a long profile by Nick Paumgarten in which he said that there was no scientific consensus on the causes of climate change and argued that, historically, prosperity has tended to go with warmer temperatures, and said that what Ayn Rand meant was “self-interest” and not “selfishness”; a company spokeswoman, Libba Letton, responded that shoppers distinguish his personal opinions from company policy.⁠[43]

In May 2010 Whole Foods Market promoted Walter Robb, co-president and chief operating officer, to co-chief executive officer alongside him, and A.C. Gallo, the other co-president and chief operating officer, became president and chief operating officer. He said that the promotions did not mean that he planned to slow down, that they formally recognized roles the two executives had long been filling, and that the company had operated with leadership by consensus for years. Texas Monthly wrote that the two shared the chief executive role for six years, that the company announced in November 2016 that Walter Robb would step aside, and that by January 2017 he was again sole chief executive.⁠[44][5]

After Wild Oats Markets, Inc. in August 2007, the acquisition list shows Greenlife Grocery LLC in May 2010, Johnnie’s Foodmaster in November 2012 and New Frontiers in April 2014.⁠[19]

On January 10, 2014 The Motley Fool announced that he had joined its board of directors; the announcement describes him as co-founder and co-chief executive of Whole Foods Market.⁠[45]

Texas Monthly wrote that the stock of Whole Foods Market peaked at $65 a share in late 2013 and later hovered around $30; his personal website places the peak in October 2014, at $65.24, with the company’s market value at a high of $24 billion, after which same-store sales slowed and turned negative. On April 10, 2017 the New York hedge fund Jana Partners disclosed that it had acquired almost 9 percent of the stock (8.4 percent on his personal website), on the day he was to launch his new book; it pressed the company to overhaul its business or sell itself and rejected the company’s offer of board seats in exchange for a standstill agreement under which it would stop agitating publicly; the company removed five of its twelve directors, among them Kip Tindell, co-founder of The Container Store. He said at the time: “That’s my baby. I’m going to protect my kid, and they’ve got to knock Daddy out if they want to take it over.”⁠[5][1]

In a 2024 interview he said that the activist shareholders threatened to take over the board, replace the management and sell the company to the highest bidder; the company suffered from its “Whole Paycheck” reputation for high prices, cutting prices as a public company would have weighed on quarterly results, and going private would have required billions of dollars of debt. One morning, he said, he woke up wondering whether AmazonAmazonAmazon is a publicly traded U.S. technology and retail company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, with its principal corporate offices in Seattle. Its businesses span e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, digital advertising, membership and entertainment services, consumer electronics, and Amazon Web Services cloud computing.Open the full entry might be interested; he had long admired Amazon and Jeff BezosJeff BezosJeff Bezos is an American entrepreneur and investor who founded Amazon in 1994, led it as chief executive for many years, and became its executive chair in 2021. He also founded the spaceflight company Blue Origin, bought The Washington Post in 2013, and set up philanthropic funds including the Bezos Earth Fund.Open the full entry, and six weeks after the first meeting the two sides signed a merger agreement.⁠[14]

On June 16, 2017 Amazon and Whole Foods Market announced a merger agreement under which Amazon would buy Whole Foods Market for $42 a share in cash, a transaction valued at about $13.7 billion including net debt and expected to close during the second half of 2017. The announcement stated that the stores would continue to operate under the Whole Foods Market name, that he would remain chief executive and that the headquarters would stay in Austin; it put Whole Foods Market’s sales in fiscal 2016 at about $16 billion, with more than 460 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom and about 87,000 employees.⁠[46]

On August 24, 2017 the two companies announced that the acquisition would close on Monday, August 28, that from that day Whole Foods Market would lower prices on a selection of best-selling staples, that Amazon’s membership program would in time become its customer rewards program, and that he would remain chief executive with the headquarters staying in Austin. His personal website likewise states that the deal closed on August 28.⁠[47][1]

After the acquisition, he said, Amazon lowered prices four times in two years, team members received raises, and shareholders received a premium of about 40 percent; he added: “I regret the circumstances that made selling to Amazon the very best option.” He said that he would make the same decision again but still sometimes wonders whether the company could have stayed independent had it fought on.⁠[14]

He writes that Whole Foods Market was named to Fortune’s list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” for 20 consecutive years, until Amazon acquired it in 2017. In the 2026 interview he said that before the acquisition the company had been an independent public company for 25 years.⁠[28][8]

The Love.Life website states that the company was co-founded in 2020 and that he is its co-creator and chief executive officer; the other two co-creators are Walter Robb, formerly co-chief executive of Whole Foods Market, and Betsy Foster, who joined in 2020 after 26 years at Whole Foods Market and serves as president. The footer of the website gives the legal entity as Healthy America LLC, doing business as Love.Life. An interview published in July 2024 describes Love.Life as launched in 2023.⁠[48][49][14]

In a blog post of December 2025 he wrote that as early as 1985 he had an idea for a business, to be called LifeWorks, that would combine food, health and wellness, that he did not act on it then because he was focused on growing Whole Foods Market, and that nearly 40 years later he acted on it through Love.Life.⁠[50]

On September 30, 2021 he announced that he would retire on September 1, 2022 and that Jason Buechel, the chief operating officer, would succeed him as chief executive. Jason Buechel had joined the company in 2013 as global vice president and chief information officer, was promoted to executive vice president in 2015 and became chief operating officer in 2019; in his letter to employees he wrote that his successor was his own choice and that Amazon’s leadership agreed.⁠[51][12]

In the letter he described his relationship to the company with the metaphor of a parent and a child and said that he would spend much of his final year visiting stores and meeting team members and would pursue other passions of his life after retiring. The letter states that Whole Foods Market helped tens of millions of people to live healthier lives and helped to launch in its stores thousands of small local food companies, hundreds of which have grown into large and successful companies, and that the three foundations, Whole Planet, Whole Kids and Whole Cities, had over the past 20 years improved the lives of several million people.⁠[12]

On September 1, 2022 he retired from Whole Foods Market, and on the same day he published on his personal website the post My Goodbye to Whole Foods, which reproduces his retirement announcement of September 2021 and a farewell note to team members written in September 2022. His personal website states that he was chief executive for 44 years, during which the company grew from one store in Austin to 540 stores in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, with annual sales of more than $22 billion and more than 105,000 team members.⁠[1][19][12]

Fortune wrote that during his transition out of Whole Foods Market, after reading Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind, he took a guided session with MDMA and psilocybin, which he says helped him to heal damaged relationships. He writes that after a guided retreat following his retirement he adopted “I AM LOVE” as the mantra he repeats silently in meditation.⁠[9][52]

An article published by Students For Liberty on November 2, 2022 states that he had shortly before spoken at LibertyCon International in Miami, where he held a main-stage conversation with the organization’s chief executive, Wolf von Laer; it states that he is a member of its board of directors and that he had recently been elected to the board of the Cato Institute.⁠[53]

In July 2023 he said that he had stopped drinking alcohol about a year and a half earlier, after the sleep data from his Apple Watch showed that alcohol reduced his deep sleep; in a blog post of January 2026 he wrote that he had eliminated alcohol completely in 2022. In January 2024 he wrote that he had taken up pickleball two years before, now played three or four times a week, and at 70 was usually one of the oldest people on the court.⁠[2][54][55]

An article published by Fast Company on July 30, 2023 states that Love.Life had made three acquisitions: Love Life Cafe, a restaurant in Miami from which the company took its brand; Mastering Diabetes, an online coaching company; and Plant Based TeleHealth, a practice in chronic-disease and preventive medicine. The first flagship was to occupy a former Best Buy of about 45,000 square feet in El Segundo, in the Los Angeles area, and to open the following year. He said: “It’ll take us years to build out the physical locations across the United States.”⁠[2]

In this interview he called Love.Life’s model “Medicine 3.0,” built on baseline testing and membership and not only on treating illness; he said that his cellular age was 65 and his metabolic age 40.5, and described Love.Life as an “infinite game.” He said that Love.Life was by then practicing medicine in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and 27 or 28 countries; the article states that Love.Life was launching three membership programs and that he was writing a memoir, The Whole Story, due in May 2024.⁠[2]

In May 2024 his memoir, The Whole Story: Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism, was published; it is listed on his author page at BenBella Books. He writes that the book took several years to write, that it tells the story of his life and the history of Whole Foods Market, and that its publication was timed to close the Whole Foods chapter and introduce Love.Life; Fortune wrote that he calls it his last gift to Whole Foods Market.⁠[19][56][1][9]

His personal website describes the contents as follows: the growth of Whole Foods Market with its missteps, conflicts and near-disasters; his spiritual journey from Christianity to New Age mysticism, Eastern wisdom and awakenings through psychedelics; his intellectual passage from countercultural co-op member to libertarian and Conscious Capitalist; his ethical awakening over animal welfare; and long-distance, ultralight backpacking.⁠[57]

In May 2024 he attended the Whole Foods Annual Gathering, where he was inducted into the Whole Foods Hall of Fame and the chief executive, Jason Buechel, gave a speech about him; he wrote: “This truly was one of the very best and deepest honors I have ever received, and I am very grateful.”⁠[58]

In the 2026 interview he said that he took Shoe Dog, by Phil KnightPhil KnightPhil Knight (Philip Hampson Knight, born 1938) is an American businessman who co-founded Nike, served as its chief executive from 1964 to 2004, and became chairman emeritus after stepping down as chairman in 2016.Open the full entry, as his benchmark in writing the memoir, that the book is written more or less chronologically and spans 44 years, and that it states how old he was at each stage.⁠[8][8][8]

A press release issued by Love.Life on August 8, 2024 announced the opening of its flagship club in El Segundo, California, of 45,000 square feet, with a welcoming ceremony and open house set for August 10. In a blog post of October 2023 he had written that the center was scheduled to open in June 2024. Fortune wrote in June 2024 that the club was set to open on July 9; an editor’s note to an interview published in July 2024 states that the first location opened in July 2024.⁠[59][60][9][14]

The release states that the club brings together functional medical care, nutrition, fitness and wellness therapies, with practitioners of more than 20 disciplines on site and a restaurant open to the public; that testing includes bloodwork measuring more than 120 biomarkers and that treatments include hyperbaric oxygen, IV therapy, cryotherapy and red light therapy; and that there are three annual memberships, Optimize, Fitness + Recovery and Concierge, and three pickleball courts. It names him as chief executive and co-creator of Love.Life.⁠[59]

He said that a vegan restaurant Love.Life had earlier opened in Los Angeles failed, which is why the club’s restaurant is “plant-forward” and not fully plant-based; he hopes to grow the first club into a chain and intends to offer psychedelic therapy once it is legal. He also said that he is able to invest in the business himself and depends less on outside investors, but that at 70 he has less energy than he once had and does not plan to work 80-hour weeks: “I’m back in startup mode.”⁠[9][14]

He gave the talk The trap of win-lose thinking (and how to escape it) at TED2025; the TED website dates its publication to April 2025 and its length is about 10 minutes. In it he describes the night a flood destroyed his first store while the business was close to bankruptcy, and how moving from win-lose thinking to “win-win-win” helped the company to grow.⁠[61][62]

In a blog post of May 2026 he wrote that September 7, 2025 was the last day of a 210-mile section hike on the Colorado Trail; at 72 he had combined the final two days into one, and about three miles from the end he lost his balance, tripped over a boulder, slid about six feet down the mountainside and hit a pine tree. He wrote that before the fall his knee and back had felt off and his balance unsteady, attributed the fall to dehydration, altitude and overexertion, and admitted that he had known something was wrong and pressed on out of pride and stubbornness: “I knew it, and I tried to push through anyway.”⁠[63]

He wrote that he had two lacerations on his head, a deep cut on his knee, severe pain in his ribs and severe numbness in his left arm; a good friend and fellow hiker known as “Mr. Wizard” found him quickly, and the group carried his gear and walked with him over the remaining three miles, which took two hours. The next morning they drove three hours back to Boulder, where he spent more than five hours at the hospital; the diagnosis was a fractured C7 vertebra and a bruised rib, and he was sent home in a neck brace to be worn at all times for six weeks.⁠[63]

He wrote that three neurosurgeons recommended immediate neck surgery because of the nerve damage and the numbness in his arm; after a fourth opinion from a neurosurgeon friend whom he trusts, he decided to try a holistic approach first, with peptides, light chiropractic adjustments, PEMF therapy given by an acupuncturist and frequent gentle massage. He wrote that he had days of doubt about declining surgery, and that eight months after the fall he had healed almost completely, with slight numbness remaining in the tip of his left index finger.⁠[63]

He wrote that in March, six months after the fall, he returned to the Appalachian Trail for a section hike of 171.4 miles, with 32,958 feet of ascent and 34,270 feet of descent, through VirginiaVirginiaVirginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state whose capital is Richmond. It entered the Union on June 25, 1788, as the 10th state, and had a population of 8,631,393 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, West VirginiaWest VirginiaWest Virginia is a U.S. state formed from the western counties of Virginia during the Civil War; its capital and largest city is Charleston. It became the 35th state on June 20, 1863. Its population was 1,793,716 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, MarylandMarylandMaryland is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States, deeply indented by Chesapeake Bay and bordered by Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, the District of Columbia and West Virginia; its capital is Annapolis and its largest city is Baltimore. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on April 28, 1788, as the seventh state to do so, and had a population of 6,177,224 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry and PennsylvaniaPennsylvaniaPennsylvania (officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States; its capital is Harrisburg, and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are its two great metropolitan areas. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787, the second state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 13,002,700.Open the full entry, on which he cut his mileage on high-elevation days and paid closer attention to hydration.⁠[63]

On September 30, 2025 he published a blog post for the 45th anniversary of Whole Foods Market (47 years, he wrote, if one counts from Safer Way, which opened in 1978), listing 45 things of which he is proud, among them: helping to write the organic standards of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA); becoming the first nationally certified organic grocer in the United States; banning more than 550 ingredients across food, beverages, body care and cleaning products; offering health insurance to team members before it was standard in the industry; and becoming the first U.S. grocer to ban disposable plastic checkout bags and the first national retailer to eliminate all plastic straws.⁠[30]

On January 4, 2026 David SenraDavid SenraDavid Senra is the founder and host of the Founders podcast, on which he reads biographies of entrepreneurs to discuss starting and running businesses and making personal decisions. He began producing the show in 2016, partnered with Colossus in 2022, and in 2025 launched David Senra, a long-form interview show under his own name.Open the full entry published a long conversation with him on his YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel under the title John Mackey: The Dropout Who Changed How America Eats; his personal website also lists the episode among his media appearances for 2026. David Senra says in the episode that before the recording the two had spent seven hours together over two days, and that he had remarked that if the Founders podcast had existed when he was younger he would have given a higher priority to controlling costs in good times and Whole Foods Market would still be an independent company.⁠[8][8][62]

The conversation opens with the devotion of entrepreneurs to their businesses; he says that, like Michael DellMichael DellMichael Dell is the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Dell Technologies. Starting from a direct-sales personal computer business, he led the company’s take-private, its acquisition of EMC, and its return to the public market, and with his wife Susan Dell co-founded a foundation that funds education, health, and children’s investment accounts.Open the full entry, he makes no distinction between work and play, and mentions that on the drive to the recording he had listened to David Senra’s episode with Michael Dell and that he had earlier heard the one with Todd GravesTodd GravesTodd Graves is an American entrepreneur and the founder of the fast-food chain Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers. In 1996 he opened the first restaurant, serving only chicken finger meals, near Louisiana State University; he has since held to a single-item menu and company-owned expansion while retaining the great majority of the company’s equity, growing it into a chain of more than 1,000 restaurants.Open the full entry. He then describes his early disagreements with his co-founders over expansion and why he insisted on expanding: retailers have no patents, and anyone can see and copy what Whole Foods Market does.⁠[8][8][8][8][8]

On venture capital, he says that it is a model that profits from a few big winners, that the funds usually have a seven-year life, and that it often pushes perfectly good businesses to scale too fast; he adds that he is glad the company got its venture capital, without which it might not have been able to grow. He also says that the most common kind of entrepreneur is in fact the serial entrepreneur, who is good at creating businesses and leaves to start another once a business has scale and a bureaucracy, and that most such people are not shallow.⁠[8][8][8][8][8][8]

Using a football metaphor, he says that once Walmart began to sell groceries the conventional supermarkets thought only of competing with it on price and cut back on their stores and their labor, while Whole Foods Market competed on quality, service and a differentiated mix of products, like a receiver running downfield wide open; in the first twenty years, he says, people’s jaws dropped the first time they walked into a Whole Foods Market, and some drove 100 miles and bought three or four hundred dollars’ worth of groceries at a time.⁠[8][8][8][8][8][8]

He goes on to the role of acquisitions and the rise and fall of the Natural Foods Network and to the satisfaction of seeing team members share in the company’s stock, and says that capitalism is what lifted humanity out of poverty: 250 years ago, by his figures, 94 percent of the people alive lived on less than $2 a day in today’s dollars and 88 percent were illiterate. Early in the episode he also says that 74 percent of Americans are overweight and 43 percent are obese.⁠[8][8][8][8][8]

He also recommends to David Senra a new book by his good friend Alexander Green, The American Dream, which, he says, shows that the American dream is alive and better than it has ever been.⁠[8][8][64]

He says that popular brands in their early days are often like “cults,” built by the enthusiasm of their users, and gives himself as an example: he did not want a TeslaTeslaTesla is an American electric vehicle and energy company whose businesses span automobiles, solar energy, and battery energy storage. Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, its shares are listed on Nasdaq under the ticker TSLA.Open the full entry until a friend got him to drive one, and he bought one the next day. Persuasive entrepreneurs, he thinks, have a kind of “reality distortion field,” and what entrepreneurs sell is dreams.⁠[8][8][8][8]

Of John D. RockefellerJohn D. RockefellerJohn D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) was an American entrepreneur and philanthropist. In 1870 he and his partners founded Standard Oil, which through mergers and the trust form of organization grew into one of the earliest large trusts in the United States, and its business methods and organizational form drew wide controversy. After withdrawing from day-to-day management in 1896, he turned to organized philanthropy on a large scale, founding institutions including the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, the General Education Board and The Rockefeller Foundation.Open the full entry he says that he was probably the greatest entrepreneur who ever lived and has been cast by intellectuals as a villain; he also points to the differences between them: Rockefeller kept integrating vertically and tried to bring order to his whole industry, and some of what he did would be illegal today, whereas he himself never tried to control his suppliers. He calls Jeff Bezos one of his heroes and says that Elon MuskElon MuskElon Musk is an entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and has long served as chief executive of Tesla; he also took part in creating PayPal, OpenAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. He acquired Twitter in 2022, and his businesses span spaceflight, electric vehicles, energy, artificial intelligence, and social media.Open the full entry too belongs among the best strategists.⁠[8][8][8][8][8][8]

The last part of the conversation turns to family and the inner life: he speaks of asking his father to leave the board and of his last meeting with his mother before her death, and advises David Senra, who was likewise estranged from his late mother, to hold a ceremony of forgiveness; he had recommended MDMA therapy to him, and for people who do not want to take a drug he recommends an hour to two hours of deep breathing with a guide. He ends by saying that the entrepreneurial journey is a “hero’s journey” and a spiritual journey as well.⁠[8][8][8][8][8][8][8]

In a blog post of August 2026 he wrote that he had turned 73 that month and set out ten lessons he would give his 25-year-old self, among them to love universally and without exceptions, to keep learning, to treat health as the most important investment, to read widely, to keep company with people who make one better, to be willing to change one’s mind and to say so, not to let fear stop one, to stay optimistic (he recommends The Rational Optimist, by Matt Ridley), and to practice meditation, breathwork, gratitude and forgiveness; he added that his 25-year-old self would probably not have listened and that many of his most important lessons came from mistakes and failures. Earlier, on his 70th birthday, August 15, 2023, he had published a post listing 70 lessons.⁠[65][3]

In a blog post of October 2026 he compared his two start-ups. When Safer Way opened he had no formal business education, did every job from founder to dishwasher and cashier, and could work long hours on four hours of sleep, and the business had to make money quickly to pay him and stay open; his father, he wrote, was a successful businessman who mentored him, and without that mentorship Whole Foods would certainly have failed. Starting Love.Life in his seventies, he wrote, he no longer has to worry in the same way about making rent or payroll and can take the long view, but he has less energy and stamina, and since the first location is in Los Angeles he spends less time on the ground and relies on mentoring and trusting the team.⁠[15]

As of November 2026 the Love.Life website lists him as co-creator and chief executive officer. His personal website states that he serves on the boards of Conscious Capitalism, the Cato Institute, The Institute for Cultural Evolution and Students for Liberty; the Love.Life website and his author page at BenBella Books add The Motley Fool. The website of the Institute for Developmental Philosophy lists him as a director.⁠[48][19][56][18]

His wife is Deborah Morin, described in the Newsmakers entry as a software consultant and yoga instructor. The Newsmakers entry and Texas Monthly’s 2017 article both state that he lives in Austin; in a blog post of February 2023 he called himself a native Texan who still lives in Austin.⁠[4][5][66]

The New Yorker’s profile in its January 4, 2010, issue said the two had married eighteen years earlier; at the time he had houses in Boulder and Austin and a 720-acre non-working ranch an hour outside of town, where he and Deborah spent many weekends.⁠[36]

In a blog post of April 2023 he wrote that in 2005 he and his wife had dinner with Milton FriedmanMilton FriedmanMilton Friedman (1912–2006) was an American economist and the leading advocate of monetarism who taught for three decades at the University of Chicago, later became a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, and received the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.Open the full entry and his wife, Rose; asked why he was a vegan, he proposed a challenge of four questions: if Milton Friedman could answer them all he would stop being a vegan, and if not Milton Friedman would become one. He recalls that after hearing them Milton Friedman said: “From this moment forward, I am a vegan.” Rose answered that he should not be ridiculous and that they were 92 years old, and he writes that he still does not know whether Milton Friedman kept his part of the deal.⁠[67]

He writes that he has enjoyed hiking for most of his adult life, that since 2002 he has also hiked the Ouachita Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, the Colorado Trail and the Alpe Adria Trail, and that he has hiked in dozens of countries and regions, among them the Alps, the Azores, Patagonia and the Via Francigena in Italy; as of July 2024 his most recent trek was the Landmannalaugar + Fimmvörðuháls route in Iceland. He says that he met some of his closest friends on the trail and had some of his best creative ideas there. In May 2023 he wrote that he had just returned to the Appalachian Trail with a few close friends for an 18-day trip of almost 200 miles. Texas Monthly wrote in 2017 that he takes one or two extended hikes a year.⁠[26][27][68][5]

In a blog post of October 2023 he wrote that he had set out on the Alpe Adria Trail in August 2022, developed a painful shin splint in his left leg after two weeks and switched to e-biking; in 2023 he went back to the trail, which runs 466 miles in 43 stages through Austria, Slovenia and Italy, and hiked all 43 stages in 40 days, six of them rest days, on a trip organized by his friend Kathy Dragon. In March 2023 he wrote that his base pack weight for a long-distance hike is just under 7 pounds; in December 2024 he wrote that Glen Van Peski is a close friend and that he wrote the foreword to Glen Van Peski’s book Take Less. Do More.⁠[60][69][70]

In April 2024 he wrote that he usually wakes at about 5 a.m., spends the first 15 minutes reading A Course in Miracles, then 5 to 10 minutes reflecting on things for which he is grateful, then practices Transcendental Meditation, has a large smoothie that is half fruit and half vegetables for breakfast, and fits in a walk, Pilates, yoga or pickleball in the morning.⁠[52]

In a blog post of January 2026 he wrote that at 72 he aims for at least 90 minutes of exercise a day, took up Pilates two years earlier, usually goes to bed between 9:00 and 9:45 p.m., and recommends meditating for at least 20 minutes a day. In August 2024 he wrote that he is typically reading four to six books at a time, listens to audiobooks and podcasts while hiking or driving, likes to host game nights with friends, and counts long-distance hiking, Pilates, yoga, walking, disc golf and pickleball among his favorite kinds of physical activity.⁠[54][71]

Fortune wrote that he began exploring breathwork in the 1980s and that he says his use of psychedelics is infrequent and has always been spiritual in nature. Inc. magazine wrote in 2015 that he does not attend church and does not believe in God in the conventional sense, and quoted him: “Whole Foods is my ashram.”⁠[9][16]

In a blog post of February 2023 he listed his five favorite films: the miniseries Lonesome Dove, Out of Africa (1985), Dr. Zhivago (1965), About Time (2013) and Ken Burns’s 1994 documentary Baseball; he wrote that he had seen About Time seven or eight times and that the soundtrack of Out of Africa is his favorite film soundtrack.⁠[66]

In a blog post of February 2026 he wrote that he and his friends often host “Jeffersonian dinners,” at which the whole table discusses a single question; in it he wrote that he was once terrified of public speaking, a fear that lasted well into his thirties, that he began to relax on stage only after practicing over and over and giving 20 or more talks over several years, and that just before he speaks he asks that his higher self speak through him.⁠[72]

In the 2026 interview he said that he would probably give his entire fortune for one more night with his parents, to be able to say how much he appreciates what they did for him and how much he loves them.⁠[8]

Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business, written with Raj Sisodia; his biography page gives Harvard Business Review Press, 2013, and calls it a New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American morning daily newspaper published in New York City. Founded in 1851, it is published by The New York Times Company.Open the full entry and Wall Street Journal bestseller, and the timeline on the website of Conscious Capitalism, Inc. likewise gives 2013, while the profile on the website of the Institute for Developmental Philosophy and the life timeline on his own website give 2014. Texas Monthly wrote that his co-author, Raj Sisodia, teaches at Babson College. His website lists endorsements from Bill George, Howard Schultz, Herb Kelleher, Luke Johnson, Ratan N. Tata, Sally Jewell and Biz Stone.⁠[19][73][18][1][5][74]

The Conscious Capitalism Field Guide, written with Raj Sisodia and Timothy Henry; the timeline on the website of Conscious Capitalism, Inc. dates its publication to 2018.⁠[73]

The Whole Foods Diet: The Lifesaving Plan for Health and Longevity (Grand Central Life & Style, 2017), written with Alona Pulde, MD, and Matthew Lederman, MD; it argues for a whole-foods, plant-based diet and includes a 28-day program. Texas Monthly wrote that the book tour began on April 10, 2017 with a Goldman SachsGoldman SachsGoldman Sachs is an American financial services group headquartered in New York whose businesses include investment banking, securities trading, asset management, and wealth management. It traces its origins to the commercial paper business Marcus Goldman founded in 1869; it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1999 under the ticker GS and became a bank holding company in 2008. David Solomon serves as chairman and chief executive officer.Open the full entry event in New York.⁠[19][75][76][5]

The Whole Foods Cookbook: 120 Delicious and Healthy Plant-Centered Recipes (Grand Central Life & Style, 2018), with 120 recipes.⁠[19][77]

Conscious Leadership: Elevating Humanity through Business, written with Steve McIntosh and Carter Phipps; the profile on the website of the Institute for Developmental Philosophy gives Penguin/Portfolio, 2020, and his own website gives September 2020 and calls it a Wall Street Journal bestseller. The book is a follow-up to Conscious Capitalism on values-based leadership. His website quotes reviews from Publishers Weekly, ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry and the Financial TimesFinancial TimesThe Financial Times (FT) is a London-based English-language business and financial news organization, known for its salmon-pink newspaper and its motto “Without Fear and Without Favour.” It was owned successively by the British Pearson group and Japan’s Nikkei Inc., and today digital subscriptions are its main source of revenue.Open the full entry and endorsements from Mark CubanMark CubanMark Cuban is an American entrepreneur and investor whose early work in computer systems and internet audio and video expanded into sports, film, venture investment and pharmaceuticals. He was the Dallas Mavericks’ controlling owner and a longstanding investor on Shark Tank, and co-founded Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company.Open the full entry, Randi Zuckerberg, Matthew McConaugheyMatthew McConaugheyMatthew McConaughey is an American actor, author and professor of practice at the University of Texas at Austin. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Dallas Buyers Club. His work includes Dazed and Confused, True Detective, Interstellar and the memoir Greenlights. He is also involved in philanthropy, sports ownership and business, and has been interviewed by School of Hard Knocks.Open the full entry and Jamie Dimon.⁠[18][1][25]

The profile on the website of the Institute for Developmental Philosophy also lists the audiobook The Power of Conscious Capitalism.⁠[18]

He has been a student of A Course in Miracles since 1984 and, in a reading list of August 2025, called it one of the most influential texts in his life; that list, devoted to spirituality, also names Essential Spirituality, by Roger Walsh, Stillness Is the Key, by Ryan Holiday, SQ21: The Twenty-One Skills of Spiritual Intelligence, by Cindy Wigglesworth, and Break the Habit of Being Yourself, by Joe Dispenza, and states that the SQ21 assessment is now included in memberships at Love.Life.⁠[78][64]

In a reading list of December 2024 he recommended ten books: Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, by Matt Ridley; Great CEOs are Lazy, by Jim Schleckser; Take Less. Do More., by Glen Van Peski; How to Argue with a Meat Eater (And Win Every Time), by Ed Winters; Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight; Get Well Stay Well, by Gemma Newman; Popping the Crypto Bubble, by Darren Tseng, Stephen Diehl and Jan Akalin; The Snowball, by Alice Schroeder; Living a Radical Life, by James Anderson; and Our Ancient Faith, by Allen Guelzo. In that list he wrote that “crypto is a huge pyramid scheme,” that reading Our Ancient Faith convinced him that Abraham LincolnAbraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States (1861–1865). Born to a frontier farming family in Kentucky, he had less than a year of formal schooling, taught himself law, and served in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives before winning the presidency as the Republican candidate in 1860. During the Civil War he preserved the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and pushed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery through Congress. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865, and died the next day.Open the full entry was “our best president,” and that he had met Dr. Gemma Newman at Plant Stock 2024.⁠[70]

The reading list of October 2024 names I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World, by Rachel Nuwer; Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes, by Morgan Housel; and Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties, by Paul Johnson. In it he wrote that he supports the use of psychedelics in controlled, therapeutic settings.⁠[79]

The reading list of April 2026 names Moving Medicine Forward, by Michael Klaper; The Disappearance of the Universe, by Gary Renard; and The American Dream: Why It’s Still Alive… And How to Achieve It, by Alexander Green. He wrote that he was reading The Disappearance of the Universe for the second time and considers it one of the best books on A Course in Miracles.⁠[64]

The reading list of October 2023, written after he finished the Alpe Adria Trail, names Outlive, by Peter Attia; the last three books of The Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (The Gathering Storm, Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light); and Elon Musk, by Walter IsaacsonWalter IsaacsonWalter Isaacson is an American biographer and journalist, born in New Orleans in 1952, and a history professor at Tulane University. He formerly led TIME magazine, CNN and the Aspen Institute. His biographies cover figures including Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Jennifer Doudna and Elon Musk. He received the National Humanities Medal in 2023.Open the full entry.⁠[60]

In his blog post of June 2026, Why I’m an Optimist: In Business and In Life, he wrote that he has always been an optimist and recommended Enlightenment Now: The Case For Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, by Steven PinkerSteven PinkerSteven Pinker is a Canadian-born experimental psychologist and popular-science author who studies language, cognition and social relations; after more than two decades at MIT he has been a professor of psychology at Harvard University since 2003, and his books include The Language Instinct, The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now.Open the full entry.⁠[80]

In a blog post of October 2023 he wrote that he is an investor in SpaceXSpaceXSpaceX is a company founded by Elon Musk in 2002 whose businesses include space transportation, Starlink satellite communications and artificial intelligence. It went public in 2026 under the ticker SPCX.Open the full entry (“Space X” in the post) and therefore in StarlinkStarlinkStarlink is a satellite broadband service supporting video calls, streaming and communications in remote locations.Open the full entry as well.⁠[60]

He is a co-founder of the Conscious Capitalism movement; Texas Monthly wrote that he coined the term “conscious capitalism.” His website summarizes the four tenets of the book of that name as higher purpose, stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, and conscious culture and management.⁠[19][5][74]

The timeline on the website of Conscious Capitalism, Inc. states that in 2005 he publicly challenged the idea that companies exist solely to maximize shareholder value, that in 2007 he worked with the business professor Raj Sisodia on the research behind conscious capitalism, and that Conscious Capitalism, Inc. was established as a nonprofit in 2009. In a blog post of January 2024 he wrote that the first conscious capitalism meeting, about 17 years earlier, had 15 attendees; he refers there to the organization as “our nonprofit,” writes that conscious capitalism “is not an economic system, but rather a management philosophy,” and says that he is concerned that it is often misrepresented and misunderstood.⁠[73][81]

The Students For Liberty article states that when he was younger he read Capitalism and Freedom, by Milton Friedman, which led him to libertarianism; he said that he had always believed in liberty but had lacked a philosophy to match. In the 2026 Free Society interview he said that he remains a very strong libertarian but is less idealistic than he was about 30 years ago and now accepts some role for government.⁠[53][10]

In the 2026 interview he said that capitalism creates outcomes in which every party wins and is not a zero-sum game, and that an entrepreneur such as Elon Musk keeps only a very tiny sliver of the value he creates; intellectuals, in his view, still see the world as zero-sum.⁠[8][8]

In a blog post of March 2023 he summed up five lessons on acquisitions: settle up front whether the acquired founder stays and what decisions are his to make; let the acquired company adopt the larger company’s useful practices on its own terms and do not force them; guard against a large company’s bureaucracy smothering new ideas; let cultures evolve naturally over time; and promote the people who are enthusiastic about the acquisition. In an acquired business, he wrote, typically 20 percent of the people are enthusiasts, 20 percent are strongly opposed and 60 percent wait and see.⁠[24]

The Newsmakers entry states that detractors, and even some loyal customers, complain about the chain’s prices and that it has the unofficial nickname “Whole Paycheck”; it quotes him in Fortune in 2007: “Everyone thinks we cater to the rich, but it’s really not true. We cater to the well-educated.” It also quotes him from a New York Times Magazine profile by Jon Gertner: “Business is always painted as the bad guys.”⁠[4]

In a 2024 interview he said that cellular, lab-grown meat could make animal foods possible without animal suffering, that wearables and continuous glucose monitors allow nearly constant health monitoring, and that artificial intelligence may improve diagnosis; he is optimistic that people will be healthier in 20 years.⁠[14]

The profile on the website of the Institute for Developmental Philosophy lists these honors: Ernst & Young’s U.S. Entrepreneur of the Year (2003), Bon Appétit’s Tastemaker of the Year (2003), Vanity Fair’s “Best Provider” (2004), second place among Institutional Investor’s “Best CEOs in America” (2005), Barron’s “World’s Best CEOs” (2006), an honorary doctorate from Bentley College (2008), MarketWatch’s CEO of the Year (2011), Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year (2011), Esquire’s “Most Inspiring CEOs” (2012) and Fortune’s “12 Greatest Entrepreneurs of Our Time” (2012).⁠[18]

His biography page adds that he was inducted into the World Retail Congress Hall of Fame in 2022 and was named one of Fortune’s “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.”⁠[19]

The media appearances listed by year on his personal website include NPR’s How I Built This and Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday in 2018, together with a debate video released by TheFreedomFest that year, “Mackey vs Thiel! Monopoly Power! Has Competition Been Oversold?”; The Joe RoganJoe RoganJoe Rogan is an American podcaster, stand-up comedian and UFC commentator whose long-form interview podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, launched in 2009, is among the most listened-to podcasts in the world; he hosted the NBC reality show Fear Factor, and his show’s content and political statements have repeatedly drawn controversy.Open the full entry Experience in 2020; and in 2023 a conversation with Adam Grant about the book Conscious Leadership at an Authors@WhartonWharton SchoolThe Wharton School is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania. Established through Joseph Wharton’s gift in 1881, it offers undergraduate, MBA, doctoral and executive education.Open the full entry event.⁠[62]

The list for 2024 includes The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish, The Rich Roll Podcast, Honestly with Bari Weiss, Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais, Masters of Scale and the PLANTSTRONG Podcast; for 2025, The Dr. Mark Hyman Show, Miracle Voices (a podcast about A Course in Miracles) and a talk released by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, “Whole Foods CEO Explains The History of Capitalism”; and for 2026, a conversation on the Developmental Philosophy channel, “Conscious Capitalism, Spiritual Practice, and the Future of Business.”⁠[62]

His Linktree page also lists an episode of Lewis Howes’s podcast, “Whole Foods CEO REVEALS How to Live in LOVE When People BETRAY You,” and an episode of the Founders podcast, “#358 I had dinner with John Mackey, Founder of Whole Foods.”⁠[82]

He says that a business, like an investment, has to be allowed to compound over many years: once the seed is planted it must be given time to grow and not be dug up again and again (video at 3:52).⁠[8]

He says that an entrepreneur should keep thinking about how to create more value for customers, including in ways the customers do not yet know they need (video at 7:10).⁠[8]

He advises young entrepreneurs not to hand control of their businesses to venture capitalists, whose interests are not fundamentally aligned with theirs (video at 13:16).⁠[8]

He says that entrepreneurs have to be very resilient, because they fail and make mistakes a great deal, and that this quality is underestimated (video at 1:01:41).⁠[8]

He advises parents to give their children no allowance and instead to put prices on household jobs, so that children earn their money by working (video at 1:03:22).⁠[8]

He says that a good entrepreneur uses other people’s criticism and doubt as fuel and is not discouraged by it (video at 1:16:07).⁠[8]

He says that human creativity has no ceiling and that the only limits on the mind are the ones we impose on ourselves (video at 1:22:07).⁠[8]

He advises someone estranged from a mother who has died to hold, in his own way, a ceremony in which he asks her forgiveness and thanks her (video at 1:35:14).⁠[8]

Whole Foods Market: Official website: https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[20]

Love.Life: Official website: https://love.life/ (opens in a new window).⁠[49]

Students For Liberty: Official website: https://studentsforliberty.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[53]

Cato Institute: Official website: https://www.cato.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10][62]

Institute for Developmental Philosophy: Official website: https://www.developmentalphilosophy.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]

The Motley Fool: Official website: https://www.fool.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[45]

Personal website: https://johnpmackey.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[83]

X: Public account: https://x.com/iamjohnmackey (opens in a new window).⁠[84]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamjohnmackey (opens in a new window).⁠[84]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/iamjohnmackey/ (opens in a new window).⁠[84]

Facebook: Public page: https://www.facebook.com/iamjohnmackey (opens in a new window).⁠[84]

LinktreeLinktreeLinktree is a link-in-bio platform founded in Melbourne in 2016 by Alex Zaccaria, Anthony Zaccaria and Nick Humphreys. It lets users gather content, websites, social accounts and commercial destinations behind a single link. The company later added analytics, social scheduling, commission-based shopping, digital-product sales and messaging, raised funding at a $1.3 billion valuation in 2022, and says on its website that it has more than 70 million users.Open the full entry: Personal link page: https://linktr.ee/iamjohnmackey (opens in a new window).⁠[84][82]

Higher Ground: Personal newsletter, sign-up page: https://johnpmackey.com/newsletter-signup/ (opens in a new window).⁠[84]