The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 17 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Mackey: Defeated four internal coup attempts across Whole Foods history
“I count four different coup attempts that occurred over the history of the company that I was able to beat back.”
Mackey: Clear grocery health ratings will drive away shoppers or get diluted
“What they would do is they'd dumb it down so that a lot of stuff that you think is red now would all of a sudden be green. And the, It's like, because most of the food that we're selling in supermarkets is not good for people. And if you start telling the trut…”
Mackey: Whole Foods Lamar location achieved highest US sales volume within six months
“In fact, within six months, it became the highest volume natural food store in the entire United States, based on everything I know about the world back then.”
Mackey: Approximately 0.5% of Americans are vegan and 2% vegetarian
“The problem in that instance is that about half of one percent of Americans are vegan, and two percent are vegetarian.”
Mackey: Whole Foods held under 1% of grocery share during FTC case
“We got less than one percent of the grocery business, and they sort of made up this category that we were the, we had a monopoly of premium natural and organic food supermarkets, but my point is, of course, we weren't a monopoly of anything”
Mackey: Whole Foods had highest sales per square foot among public food retailers
“We had, at the time, the activist investors invested in Whole Foods. We had the highest sales per square foot of any public food retailer. We'd had the same store sales growth of eight percent over a thirty-plus year period.”
Mackey: Warren Buffett declined buying Whole Foods due to Dairy Queen ownership
“Warren Buffett's like the best example, and we actually contacted Warren and asked him if he'd be interested, and he has a good sense of humor, and he said that ah, you know, I own Dairy Queen. I don't think Holfe is a good brand fit for me. And so, nothing ca…”
Mackey: Whole Foods signed Amazon merger agreement six weeks after first meeting
“They came down just three days later, and six weeks after that first meeting, we had signed an agreement to get married, to merge”
Mackey: Whole Foods lost $100 million on dot-com investments
“Times, I had the, I bought the Amory on, I pushed the dude dot com, we can't let the internet opportunity escape us. A hundred million dollars we lost.”
Mackey: Whole Foods bulk food sales dropped from over 20% to under 1%
“Our very first store was over 20% of our sales were in the bulk foods department, and we didn't have any candy back then. So it was just whole grains, whole, whole grain flour, beans, nuts, seeds, things like that, whole foods. And today it's under one percent…”
Whole Foods survived 1981 flood only through a banker's personal guarantee
“He said, John, the bank turned the loan down. The only reason you got that money was Mark Monroe personally guaranteed that loan.”
Mackey: Amazon invested hundreds of millions in delivery during COVID-19
“Amazon was able to step up and invest literally hundreds of millions of dollars in delivery in order to enable Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh to be able to deliver when the demand went from virtually zero to a huge percentage of your business.”
Mackey: Whole Foods grew slowly in new markets for 10-15 years
“Anytime Whole Foods went into a new market for the first 10 to 15 years we existed, it was a slow growth. Because people just had never heard of us before.”
Mackey: Whole Foods acquired all peer entrepreneurs in the Natural Foods Network
“And eventually Whole Foods ended up, all those entrepreneurs all ultimately sold out to us. So Natural Foods Network ended up being this great vehicle of relationship building that allowed those entrepreneurs to all cash out and make, become millionaires and m…”
Amazon acquisition talks involved a secret location and security searches
“When we were going up there to talk about maybe Amazon buying Whole Foods you know, we were meeting at Jeff's Boathouse, which was next to his mansion on Lake Washington, and, but when we, they wouldn't tell us who the meeting place was until we landed, and th…”