Lots of care went into the production of this year’s edition of the WholeFoods Magazine Source Directory. Containing nearly 3,000 companies, cross-indexed in multiple ways, it is the product of much work and attention from the entire team. Leading this year’s effort was former associate editor Sebastian Krawiec. His industry...
Yes, Expo West was big. According to the organizers, more than 85,000 attendees swarmed the Anaheim Convention Center, including the new North Halls, with 3,521 natural products and services companies exhibiting — more than 600 of them first-timers looking for that big break. While Whole Foods Market Amazon kept its...
Many moving parts go into the production of a magazine and that is multiplied this month by the 40th Annual WholeFoods Magazine Retailer Survey conducted in conjunction with Readex Research. When accompanied by Retail Insights’ proprietary Retail Universe, it shows that independent organic and health food stores garnered $11.48 billion...
Turning 50 is a milestone birthday and an independent family-owned company that can grow to a half-billion in sales by “doing the right thing” warrants some examination. How the late Elwood Richard founded NOW in 1968 as a house brand for the Fruitful Yield Health Foods stores is a story...
Are you a resolution-maker? I prefer to call my set of intentions for 2018 a list and at the very top is a reminder to Have Fun with bullet points specifying exactly how I will do that. It’s written by hand because I know the message is reinforced in a...
When asked what keeps him up at night, the CEO of a nutritional supplement company told me it’s the fear someone will die after consuming something they bought on Amazon.com. With the volume of selling that occurs on the platform and the relative lack of scrutiny, it’s a conceivable scenario.
I set my bags down and plopped into the chair with the folks from iHeart at SupplySide West (SSW) to check off an item on my punchlist — getting familiar with my internal age. The iHeart device clips on the finger and measures stiffness of the arteries through the velocity...
The call came in from “someone with a story idea” within minutes after our weekly email newsletter went out carrying a lead item about Day One price cuts at the new Whole Foods + Amazon. As the first editor this independent health store owner tried to reach, I got the...
Combing through the WholeFoods Magazine archives while writing a tribute to Stanley Jacobson, I hit pay dirt with a statement he made in 1985 during his run for the presidency of the National Nutritional Foods Association (now NPA). “This industry has been largely responsible for turning the health ‘fad’ into...
I got an inside window to the state of school lunch earlier this year while spending time with Kindergarten and first grade students in an economically and culturally diverse community just outside New York City. Wearing my anthropologist researcher’s hat, I studied what came in and what went out. School...
