It's a new day at Whole Foods

For more than 40 years, Whole Foods Market has been largely led by one man.  

But that changes Thursday, with the retirement of company co-founder John Mackey, the iconoclastic, outspoken leader who piloted the grocery chain from its birth as a single health food shop into a high-tech retailer with more than 500 locations that was purchased by Amazon for more than $13 billion five years ago. Along with Mackey, Walter Robb served as co-CEO of Whole Foods from 2010 to 2017. 

Jason Buechel, who had been Whole Foods’ COO since 2019, was named Mackey’s successor upon his retirement announcement a year ago.   

Buechel has dropped few breadcrumbs about his plans for this new era of Whole Foods. And the grocer did not respond to a WGB request to comment on the leadership transition.  

But the new CEO acknowledged the magnitude of Mackey’s achievements in the grocery industry through the decades. 

“They’re impossible shoes to step into,” Buechel told the Wall Street Journal in June during a Global Food Forum interview. “John is a legend. He helped create the natural and organic industry, not only in this country but in this world.” 

Whole Foods has faced a mountain of challenges in recent years, including enduring the many impacts of the pandemic and the changes brought by the Amazon acquisition, he acknowledged.  

“One of my top goals is to reignite the connection to our higher purpose, mission and core values with our team members,” Buechel said. “For us, we’ve always been a purpose-driven organization and reconnecting to those roots, I think, is really important.”  

Mackey, with his business partners, opened his first natural-and-organic store in 1978 in Austin, Texas, and turned it into a Fortune 500 company that went public in 1992. He wanted to help shoppers satisfy their lifestyle needs with quality natural and organic foods, and build a more conscious way of doing business. Amazon purchased Whole Foods in 2017. Today Whole Foods Market has more than 500 stores across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.  

“Honestly, it’s very hard to retire from a company that I have helped to create, nourish and grow for 44 years,” Mackey said about his retirement in a memo to employees last year. “As a co-founder of Whole Foods, I’ve often explained my relationship to the company with a parent-child metaphor. As a parent, I have always loved Whole Foods with all my heart. I have done my best to instill strong values, a clear sense of higher purpose beyond profits, and a loving culture that allows the company and all our interdependent stakeholders to flourish. All parents reach a time when they must let go and trust that the values imparted will live on within their children.” 

Buechel joined Whole Foods in 2013 as executive vice president and chief information officer, before being promoted to chief operating officer about three years ago.  

In his COO role, Buechel oversaw the company’s technology, supply chain and distribution, cross-functional business integration, and human resources functions for more than 100,000 workers. 

“Jason has a number of very special qualities that will help him succeed as our next CEO,” Mackey told the company. “Not only is he extraordinarily intelligent with unusually high integrity, he is also a servant leader who lives and embodies Whole Foods’ core values and leadership principles and is fundamentally just a good and loving person.” 

Challenges ahead

Natural and organic foods have undergone major shifts since Mackey opened his first market.  

“We’re going to see much more plant-based alternatives that come up,” he told the WSJ. “There’s growing demand … Customers want to know what is the social and environmental impact of products. They want to know where it was grown, how it was grown.” 

But Whole Foods, which has long been derided as “Whole Paycheck” because of its higher-than-average prices, will likely face some hurdles as food-at-home prices continue to soar.  

The new CEO said Whole Foods has worked hard to move away from that stigma and has made investments to lower prices since becoming an Amazon brand.  

Juggling Mackey’s original vision for the company with the mission of a giant retailer like Amazon will continue to be a struggle for Buechel to contend with, those in the industry said.  

“I admire Mr. Buechel’s insight and his desire to connect with Whole Foods’ ‘heritage values,’” Gary Sankary, industry marketing strategist at information system company Esri, told Forbes. “I do wonder how that will work when those values conflict with Amazon’s. Managing that is going to be really difficult to do, I suspect.”

Buechel’s push to return Whole Foods to its roots is likely a wise step, Ethan Chernofsky, VP of marketing at foot traffic data firm Placer.ai told WGB via email. “The most important thing that can happen for Whole Foods is a return to normalcy. The brand is among the strongest and most recognizable in the sector and the ability to operate in a 'normal' environment should help the chain's unique advantage stand out once more,” Chernofsky said. “Whole Foods has traditionally served a very critical role in the wider grocery landscape. The likeliest path to success is staying true to the elements that have traditionally set Whole Foods apart and allowed it to achieve such an important status within the space.”

Buechel said he is prepared to position Whole Foods for its next decade of growth.

“I want to talk about what we are going to do in 10 years that’s going to change the world,” he said at the WSJ event. “We’re more than just a grocery store.”

CORRECTION: This story has been corrected to add Walter Robb’s tenure as co-CEO of Whole Foods.