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Whole Foods Market Appoints John Mackey Sole CEO

Whole Foods Market is transitioning from co-Chief Executive Officers to a sole Chief Executive Officer, with co-Founder John Mackey to serve in that capacity. Walter Robb will remain on the company’s board of directors and continue to serve as Chairman for both Whole Kids Foundation and Whole Cities Foundation. He will officially transition his co-CEO responsibilities on December 31, 2016, and will continue to be a senior advisor to the company. Robb has served the company for 25 years, most recently as co-Chief Executive Officer for the previous six years.

“Under Walter’s leadership, Whole Foods Market has grown from 12 to 464 stores in three countries. He has been instrumental in accelerating investment in our digital strategy and technology transformation to meet the ever-changing retail landscape,” said Dr. John Elstrott, Chairman of Whole Foods Market’s board of directors. “In the past year Walter and John have hired five new senior executives, and have adopted and made significant progress on their nine point strategic plan, putting the company in a strong foundational position for winning.”

“It is impossible to convey what Walter has done for Whole Foods Market since he joined us in 1991,” said co-Founder and co-Chief Executive Officer John Mackey. “His incredible passion for retail and sense of the customer makes him the most extraordinary retailer I’ve had the privilege to work with. During his 25 years of leadership, Walter has been an advocate for the Whole Foods Market culture and a champion for our team members. His genuine love for our mission and our team members truly reflects what it means to be a conscious leader.”

You can just picture buy viagra from canada how discomforting and how intrusive this can be. In general terms the problem is hard wired and can cialis tablets australia badly affect your state of mind. For the next 6 months of licensure, buy generic cialis only three individuals under age 20 should be allowed. Later, the dosage can buy levitra cute-n-tiny.com be increased as per the ability and skills. Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Glenda Flanagan, the longest ever serving female Chief Financial Officer in the Fortune 500, will retire from the role after 29 years at the end of the 2017 fiscal year. She will continue to serve the company in a senior advisor capacity.

“Glenda joined Whole Foods Market in 1988 and has helped guide us through significant growth from six stores to 464 stores and more than $15 billion in sales today,” said co-Chief Executive Officers John Mackey and Walter Robb. “She has been an outstanding CFO. Her intelligence, wisdom, business acumen, kindness and integrity have been at the heart of everything Whole Foods Market has done and accomplished over the past 28 years. Glenda is deeply loved and respected by us and everyone at Whole Foods Market who has had the opportunity to know her.”

Adding to the changes, Mary Ellen Coe, Vice President of Sales and Product Operations for Google, has joined the Whole Foods Market board of directors. “Mary Ellen’s deep experience in marketing, digital strategy, and brand strategy is incredibly valuable, and we’re excited to have such a talented leader join our board of directors,” said Elstrott. “We’re confident that her expertise and understanding of the evolving marketplace will benefit the company as we remain focused on strategic investments in marketing and elevating digital experience.”

Super Natural Food Center Celebrates 43 Years in Business

By Lorrie Baumann

Joe Tittone’s Super Natural Food Center in Grand View, Missouri, celebrated its 43rd anniversary in September. “We’re one of the original health food stores in this area,” he said.

The 1,200-square-foot store in the town about 20 miles south of downtown Kansas City, Missouri, stocks primarily vitamins but also a selection of canned, refrigerated and frozen foods. Two vitamin formulas that Tittone created years ago, Super-Vite and Arth Support, draw customers to the store from 20 to 30 miles around. Other customers come because they’ve heard through word of mouth that they can depend on Tittone’s advice to help them with nutritional issues and health problems.
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Over the years, Tittone has seen drastic changes in his market, with big corporations and chain stores taking increasing market share, and in the past few years in particular, online retail also taking a share of his business. “I’ve seen different changes in customers. A lot of them are going to the big corporations, and the quality of the vitamin is not as good as you find in the independent stores,” said Tittone, who runs the store with help from his daughter Heather and his wife Kelly. “A lot of these big corporations, they have no knowledge of the body. They don’t know what they’re selling. They just put it on the shelves.”

Many Super Natural Food Center customers are folks who’ve been coming to the store for decades, depending on the Tittone family to offer them good advice. “Most people will come here because they heard that we can help them nutritionally,” Tittone said. “All we can do is take it a day at a time and count our blessings.”

Eataly Surrounds Customers with Italian Food Culture

By Lorrie Baumann

dscn1408Half the sales for the Eataly store on Fifth Avenue in New York City come from dry grocery, while the other half are rung up at the store’s five restaurants. “We didn’t know that in the beginning,” Lidia Bastianich told an audience at the 2016 Dairy-Deli-Bake Seminar & Expo in May. “People really like this combination.”

Eataly is owned by a partnership of Founder Oscar Farinetti, who started the concept in 2007 with a 30,000-square-foot store in Torino, Italy; the B & B Hospitality Group, which includes Lidia Bastianich, Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich; and Adam and Alex Saper. Since then, the group has grown to include a store in Chicago, a second store under development in New York’s World Trade Center and planned stores in Boston, Los Angeles and Sao Paulo Brazil.

Lidia Bastianich is the host of PBS’ “Lidia’s Kitchen” television program and the author of 10 cookbooks as well as the owner of a specialty line of pastas and sauces. She opened her first restaurant in 1971 and moved into writing cookbooks from there. Julia Child discovered her and mentored her through the development of her television program. “One thing leads to the next,” she said.

The opportunity to be part of the grocery business came along with a meeting with Oscar Farinetti, who had opened his store in Torino and was eager to find the right partners to open a store in the United States. He found New York restaurateurs B & B Hospitality Group and the Saper brothers, and together, they opened the 50,000-square-foot Eataly store on New York’s Fifth Avenue in 2010. “We found the space, we liked the location,” Bastianich said. The store now gets 50,000 visitors a day, making it one of New York City’s major tourist attractions. “You have a glass of wine, and you travel around and shop,” Bastianich said. “How civilized is that?… It’s relaxed buying.”

The store is built around La Piazza, a hub and meeting place “where people can claim their space,” Bastianich said. Around La Piazza are salumi and cheese counters, bakery, enoteca, ice cream shop and coffee counter tucked between restaurants that use as their ingredients the same products that are sold on the retail floor. “It is embracing the customer 360 degrees,” Bastianich said. “We are the guarantee behind those restaurants.”

dscn1423The salumi and cheese counter sells 200 to 300 pounds of American and Italian artisan cheese per day. The fresh mozzarella sold at Eataly is stretched on the premises from curds purchased from local artisans. Vegetables on the produce counters are fresh and seasonal, mostly local, with some imported Italian produce. A vegetable butcher on staff can clean the customers’ vegetable for them, so that a customer might pick out the week’s vegetables and then have a snack at the crudo restaurant that’s right there next to the produce counters and consult with the chef about what to do with the purchased produce once it’s at home. “Our target audience is everyone,” Bastianich said. “It’s a 360 degree concept of food from source to preparation and making the consumer a winner…. You need to make the customer feel like they have learned something and they can do it. And if not, they have the opportunity to learn it again in our store.”
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Fish, both at the fish counter and in the restaurant, is seasonal and local. “It has to be fresh. The smell when you come to the fish counter should be clean,” Bastianich said. The fishmonger on duty will scale and fillet the customer’s purchase.
The meat counter features a lot of secondary cuts, and the animals from which it came were sustainably raised. “We check all of our producers,” Bastianich said.

The Eataly Bakery and Focacceria makes more than 11,000 loaves of bread per week. “And we sell it. We use it also in our restaurants,” Bastianich said. “Tastings of everything are so important in the store.”

The cooks behind the pasta-making counter make 5,000 pounds of fresh pasta per week. “A lot of it is taken home,” Bastianich said. “We also offer all of the time the opportunity to discuss pasta.” Eataly’s La Pasta restaurant and the La Pizza restaurant right next to it are the two most popular in the store. “We sell 3,000 pizzas a week, easily,” Bastianich said.

The pizza operation is conducted in partnership with Rosso Pomodoro, which built the ovens, and the only type of pizza sold is Neapolitan, which has a crust that’s a little puffier and a little wet in the middle compared to the Roman-style cracker-type crust that’s more familiar to New Yorkers. “You have to send a message. You can’t be everything to everybody,” Bastianich said.
Monthly promotions in the store focus on one of Italy’s 20 food regions at a time. “They are encouraged, demanded to bring in special products from the region,” Bastianich said. “We do have a lot of authentic small producers that have those authentic flavors.”

The La Scuola cooking school has event year-round with food and wine courses, demonstrations and lectures from renowned chefs. A typical class might feature three to four recipes with paired wines, for an experience that the school tries to make a complete immersion in the cuisine even though it’s not hands-on. The store also uses its various spaces as catering venues as well as spaces in which to hold educational and cultural events, often to raise funds for local charities. “You cannot be in business and be isolated from the community where you are doing business,” Bastianich said. “Life is too short. You have to eat well…. You need to be strong and stand your ground because America is ready. They love it.”