Message URL: http://www.curezone.org/blogs/fm.asp?i=2250382

Head Scattered…lots to pull together...
(Plant Your Dream!)

Head Scattered…lots to pull together...

Date:   4/28/2015 1:31:18 AM ( 9 y ago)

Whole Foods Local section?
Where does this go>

HOW THE WORD “LOCAL” CAME TO WHOLE FOODS MARKET HILLCREST

I was responsible for helping, or in sync, with the concept of shopping “Local” becoming a promotional concept that Whole Foods Market used. Before that time, this was that was not a word that Whole Foods Market used or promoted. The word was no where in the store to be found on the day following the San Diego #EarthFair when I came into the store with some berries and started the conversation going about having these fresh picked berries in the produce section. Joe Rodriquez jr picked strawberries and brought them to the Hillcrest Farmers Market down the street. There was always a lot of berries that went unsold. I thought perhaps these fresh picked berries could be brought to Whole Foods Market Hillcrest, down the street from the Hillcrest Farmers’ Market. I had friends in marketing at the store. We had a good rapport. I was also getting to know the store team leader,. who was introduced to me through Michael Besancon, the President of the Southern Pacific Whole Foods Region at that time. . I personally gave samples of the strawberries, and they were an extraordinary hit. No strawberries of that freshness had ever been in the store. People wrote rave reviews. I made friends with a couple of the shoppers. Between that time and the next year or so, Whole Food Market started to promote the concept of “Local” in a big way. In the beginning, I would pick up the left over strawberries from the nearby Hillcrest Farmers Market and bring them to shoppers. From those initial free giveaways of “Local” food, the concept of “Local” spread out across Southern California. Whole Foods Market ran with the concept. At one point, a poster with my picture of Joe Rodriguez Jr, was featured in the Whole Foods Market Hillcrest store for more than nine months. Pictures of other local farmers were featured as well in the Hillcrest Whole Foods Market store. That concept continues today. A few years later, Whole Foods Market Hillcrest collaborated with Joe and I to sponsor an #EarthFair booth. My Van, the EG Mobile, was part of that exhibit. All these events were recorded in photos. Hopefully those photos will show up.

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Find a place for this, Goldman…
Where does it fit…?
what was this inspired to write?

WHOLE FOODS MARKET IS A TRENDSETTER; OTHER SUPERMARKETS WATCH, LEARN, AND COPY WHAT THEY DO

I had a sense that other Supermarkets watch closely what Whole Foods Market does. One day, sometime around 2005=2007, I was in the Long Beach area at a Wild Oats store that has since become Whole Foods Market Long Beach. They had major banners out front that said we feature “Local” Produce. I was so excited to see the “Local” promotion that I sought out the produce manager. I congratulated him for the signage. He said thank y0u. Then after we talked awhile, he pulled me aside and asked, “Can you please explain what ‘Local’ means?” I never forgot that experience. These banners had come down from the corporate level, from someone who had been watching Whole Foods Market. Hopefully, current promotions that WFM does, will also become trends that the Supermarket Industry follows. I especially set the Label GMO catching on like wildfire now. Two of my current Projects, “OpenAccessforFood for All, and #OpenAccessforFood for All Pollinators, were both inspired by ideas that I heard with from Walt Robb, Co-Ceo of WFM, or from the #EarthDay 2015 Promotion, “Plant Seeds Protect Pollinators. I am running with both concepts.

 

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