This week I enjoyed reading an article on Whole Foods and their CEO John Mackey in Fast Company The Anarchist’s Cookbook (via http://www.odonnellweb.com/mtarchives/001154.html Chris O’Donnell)
Two excerpts I liked:
How Mackey responded to protestor Lauren Ornelas.
“…I didn’t understand why these people were so passionate about this issue,” he says. “I perceived them as our enemies. Now, the best way to argue with your opponents is to completely understand their point of view.”
Mackey did two things. He changed his vegetarian diet to vegan (he no longer eats food produced from animals, including dairy products). And he sent Ornelas an email telling her she was right — not just about ducks, but about chickens, pigs, and cows. Mackey wrote that Whole Foods would immediately begin using its influence and buying power to demand that the meat it sells comes from animals that have been treated with a measure of dignity before being slaughtered. He invited Ornelas to help.
How Mackey got his start: dishwasher showers and meeting “really cool women”
John Mackey started out with a small health-food store that he opened with his then-girlfriend, Renee Lawson Hardy, in a three-story building on 8th and Rio Grande in Austin in 1978. There was the store on the first floor, a health-food restaurant on the second, a bed on the third. “We didn’t even have a shower,” says Mackey. “Renee and I would take showers in the Hobart dishwasher in the restaurant, you know, using the spray hose.”
It has always been easy to underestimate Mackey, who says that he first discovered vegetarian food when he joined a vegetarian group house in college. “I thought I would meet some really cool women there,” he says. “And I did.”
The things you do for love…
Yesterday we ate a version of Shimon Rura’s Sweet Chili Chicken Salad for dinner. Thursday night we ate a version of Seattle Bon Vivant’s Salmon recipe. Tomorrow night I’m making a pork tenderloin, already marinating in a recipe I found via epicurious.com suggested by Kirstin and also on Troy & Gay’s recipezaar.com. Thanks to all for the yummy recipes…
Foodgoat…something tasty every day…
