CEO's health-care stance upsets Whole Foods fans

WASHINGTON — Whole Foods aficionados who assumed the retailer's management was as crunchy as the brand are feeling betrayed.

They have stormed Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere to vent their rage at CEO John Mackey. In an op-ed column in The Wall Street Journal last week, he argued for health-care savings accounts and declared that health care is not an intrinsic right — ideas that made Whole Foods' liberal customer base go ballistic.

"A lot of people have been paying a premium for the Whole Foods brand for years," said Mark Rosenthal, a Massachusetts playwright who founded the Boycott Whole Foods group a few days ago. It has nearly 14,000 members.

"A lot of people are sad to look at this corporation and see that it is just like any other, if not worse," Rosenthal said.

Whole Foods spokeswoman Libba Letton said Mackey was expressing personal opinions and that the company has no official position.

Whole Foods has sent letters to customers apologizing for any offense and created a forum on its Web site to discuss the issue. There are more than 10,000 posts, compared with 77 posts on the raw-foods forum.

Mackey is not the first corporate executive to wade into the contentious health-care debate, but other brands do not inspire the level of fanaticism that Whole Foods does.

Safeway CEO Steve Burd wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in June that also called for market-based changes in health care with nary a social-media ripple.

In a post to the D.C. for Obama listserv urging members to boycott Whole Foods, Thomas Goldstein wrote: "We want CEOs to understand that they benefit from promoting progressive policies and face costs when they take right-wing stands."

Mackey has described himself as a free-market libertarian and has long been known as a maverick in the industry. He has cut his salary to $1 and has imposed caps on executive wages but opposes labor unions. Mackey was unavailable for an interview, but on his blog he blamed the column's headline — "The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare" — for sparking some of the furor. He noted that his piece did not mention the president.

He did mention, though, that the company provides high-deductible insurance for most of its employees.

Spokeswoman Letton noted the grocer's long history in supporting sustainability and organic farming, food and nutritional labeling, and ethical treatment of animals.

But that is part of what made Whole Foods the "primo hangout of liberal Democratic yuppies," as one call to action on MySpace put it.

"I think a lot of people feel really betrayed," Rosenthal said.