When Whole Foods has gone into new locations, it has often put smaller independent grocers out of business....resulting in, wait for it... loss of longer held jobs by people who live in those neighborhoods.

Local eggs and dairy are easy enough to find.  They are so easy to find that I can often choose between different local brands.  Meat is a bit more difficult, although I am lucky enough to get beef and goat from a family that both raises their own and runs the butcher's shop.  

But I have to ask, what is the point of publicly stating views that you have to know will honk off most of your customers?  Olberman says that there is a lot of boycott talk, on the store's own website.

Making the case of continuing to shop at Whole Foods out of some kind of concern for the workers well-being is a peculiar position, when many nearby grocery stores are actually closed shops (by me, both Dominick's and Jewel are unionized--the Jewel proudly bears a sticker on the front door). If caring about the worker was important, the effort should be made to shop at unionized groceries, not to keep anti-union ones in business.

"I want to protect the workers, so I'm not boycotting Whole Foods over the stupid remarks of its CEO."

In my area (East Bay Area) we have the usual Safeways and Luckys, and then if you want better (organic, local, etc.) stuff that's a little more expensive you can go to Whole Foods.  

But there's another store in the area called Draegers, and one would think Draegers is a boutiquy store for only the super wealthy.  It is located on the edge of a gated community of multi-million dollar homes.  

So here's what I've found.

Whole Foods has higher prices for the same stuff than Draegers.  And it's because of a marketing strategy that exploits the good intentions of people who would support Obama and his policies.

I, too, care about their workers.  But I care about all the other workers in the US who have no insurance or lousy insurance.  And all the workers who lose their jobs and have to go on COBRA at astronomical prices...until it runs out.

So am I formally boycotting? No. After much pondering and discussion (some of it here in case anyone cares) I've decided that boycotting "formally" won't be the politically wise thing to do for a number of reasons but in part because I have to pick my battles in order to increase my efficacy overall.

But, Mackey hurt his brand identity... and while I'm not going out with pitchforks and shouting a boycott from the rooftops of a million social media outlets and to all my friends and family, you can bet that I won't be shopping there as much. I used to go every Monday... now that he's disrupted their brand identity... I just don't feel like going there as much... sorry Mackey.

Any you know... the hurt brand identity is a perfectly free markety reason to not shop there... it's Marketing 101 without even treading on boycott territory. Crafting brand identities is all about communicating values to the consumer, and Mackey just tainted the values communicated by the Whole Foods brand, and the brand no longer aligns with my predilections as well, so I'll be taking much of my business elsewhere. Cold hard capitalism at work - that's part of the beauty of that angle of the non formal nature of ratcheting down my Whole Foods purchases - it creates a consequence but can't be written off as "liberal nonsense overreaction."

It's just business.

The way I put it on my blog is that it's a middle ground reaction to a middle ground situation. It wasn't a cut and dry OH THIS IS DEFINITELY BOYCOTT MATERIAL in my mind, but it certainly did rub me the wrong way.