The management philosophy of Whole Foods Market, Inc

At Whole Foods Market, the most basic organizational unit is not the store, but the team. Each store is made up of about eight teams, who are given a high degree of autonomy and the right to manage all aspects of the store, from seafood to food production to cashiering.

By the rules, each new colleague is assigned to a team, and after a four-week probation, the team members vote on the fate of the new colleague – the new colleague must receive more than 2 3 votes in favor to get a full-time position. This process, based on a colleague's vote on whether or not to hire a candidate, is used for all candidates. John McGee believes that critical decision-making issues should be made by those who are most affected by the outcome of that decision, such as the question of who to hire should be decided by the people he will work with in the future.

This groundbreaking spirit of decentralization permeates every aspect of Whole Foods Market's management model. The small team is responsible for all core business decisions, including product pricing, merchandising, personnel recruitment, and strategy. For example, after discussing with the store manager, the team leader can freely decide the product variety and inventory to purchase, which is very different from the traditional supermarket operation method.

At Whole Foods Market, no executive sits in an office deciding what should be on the shelves. Whole Foods Market encourages stores to source any product locally while enforcing the company's strict product standards. As a result, each Whole Foods store has its own unique product portfolio.

Within their respective departments, it is also up to the teams to decide on the placement of employees, but the store manager has the right of first choice.

Every four weeks, Whole Foods calculates the profit generated per unit of labor time for each team in each store, and teams that perform more than a certain amount will receive bonuses. Every team has the right to know all the company's performance appraisal data, and no team wants to be a laggard, so every team is encouraged to work hard.

Whole Foods is an invincible competitor because it's always competing with itself. Teams compete with their benchmark teams, against other teams in Uni-President stores, and against similar teams in other stores, and their success is directly reflected in team recognition, bonuses, and promotions. Each store is evaluated by headquarters managers and regional directors in 300 different ways to evaluate store performance, which is carried out ten times a year.

The "customer impression" evaluation of each store is made by the other stores, and in this way, the competition among employees is stimulated.

Democracy and discipline, trust and duty, solidarity and fierce internal competition, these seemingly contradictory values are harmoniously united in Whole Foods Market. It is this special ability that has created the company's unique, efficient, and hard-to-replicate management mechanism.

In 2004, it opened *** in the famous Time Warner Center in Manhattan, with an area of more than 5,000 square meters, which can be called the largest supermarket in New York. In the same year, Whole Foods acquired six branches of the natural food supermarket Fresh &Wild in London, and plans to open three more stores. The "Whole Foods Supermarket" aims to be global.

In 2004, the Financial Times described Whole Foods as "the fastest-growing large retailer in the United States, with same-store sales up from the previous quarter."

Whole Foods Supermarket "provides many customers with the healthy food they want. However, given the high cost of these foods, the "Whole Foods Market" has been nicknamed Whole PayCheck.

Whole Foods Market is a retail landscape in the United States. With the rise of discount chains like Wal-Mart supercenters, the market is more competitive than ever, but Whole Foods has far outpaced its competitors at double-digit sales growth. In addition, Whole Foods does not advertise and relies on word of mouth from customers.

Originally started as a storefront in College Town Austin, Texas, Whole Foods Mart capitalized on the growing consumer interest in organic and natural products. At the moment the group is in the midst of a process of change to get rid of its dependence on "food fans". Whole Foods aims to double the number of stores and increase annual sales from $3.9 billion by the end of November 2004 to $10 billion by 2010.

At the same time, Whole Foods also intends to expand overseas.

Five years ago, Whole Foods changed its business goal from "Best Organic Food Store" to "Best Food Store." John McKee, one of the company's founders and CEO, said, "At that time, we were starting to notice a new type of customer coming into our store who liked the service and thought the food tasted better. ”

Whole Foods went public in 1992, giving it the capital to acquire a large number of acquisitions. By the end of the fiscal year that year, it had 163 stores.

Healthy lifestyle customers still account for 2 3 percent of its total customers, but the faster growing segment includes shoppers who are willing to pay extra for fresh products. To meet the needs of these customers, Whole Foods has now established a group of suppliers to supply its vast fresh food, aquatic and meat divisions.

During last year's Thanksgiving, retailers struggled to implement a variety of activities. But Whole Foods is keeping its bottom line profitable because of its unscrupulous appeal to customers' lifestyles. While competitors have expanded their exclusive areas for natural and organic products, McGee believes the concept of "one-stop" shopping is no longer in the United States, and there is plenty of evidence that people are willing to walk into his store just to buy a piece of salmon.

The rapid expansion of Whole Foods was achieved through a decentralized culture that has now expanded to about 10 regions in the United States. "Each store is experimenting with its own ideas, and successful ideas are being researched and promoted in no time," says McGee. One example he cites is the San Diego branch's decision to roast coffee in-store, a move that has since been replicated by 50 other locations.

Whole Foods' interest is not limited to the United States. In 2004, Whole Foods acquired a small organic food chain in the UK and plans to open its own branch in central London. McGee said:

We're going to get a lot of intellectual property from Europe, which will allow us to operate better in the United States," he said. "And if you fail to open a store, you won't have much to lose. ”

In the U.S., cultural and well-paid white-collar workers believe that wearing organic cotton T-shirts made from cotton that has not been treated with fungicides or pesticides is a healthier, more fashionable way to live. After work, instead of going to McDonald's, they go to the Whole Foods Market to buy something to take home, or just eat at the deli there.

These lifestyles were once the trendy lifestyles favored by a small group of new classes, and they were the ones that many working-class people aspired to, and Whole Foods was brilliant in its ability to turn this marginalized lifestyle into a mainstream lifestyle, and it was the biggest winner with its commercial success.