John Mackey: Not Your Average Grocer

Dan Rather Profiles The Founder And CEO Of Whole Foods Market

(CBS) 
Carol Ann Sayle at Boggy Creek Farm in Austin started selling produce to Whole Foods 15 years ago. She picks 17 heads of lettuce, washes them in a sink, packs the lettuce in the car and delivers it immediately to the local Whole Foods.

Mackey says the company deals with farms of all different sizes, from very small farms to some pretty big ones, noting that there are now some big organic farms.

And, so, while most of us imagine organic to mean small, family run farms like the five-acre Boggy Creek Farm — where lettuce is handpicked — larger farms are the growing reality. Whole Foods also counts on large industrialized organic farms such as the 26,000-acre Earthbound Farm, based in California, where they process 17,000 pounds of lettuce every hour. It still has to be organic, which means they can't use pesticides or synthetic fertilizers. The leaves are pre-washed on conveyor belts, swept into salad spinners the size of washing machines, and packaged on automated assembly lines. Each week, Earthbound ships 22 million servings of salad in refrigerated trucks to stores across the country.

Some of that goes to Whole Foods, which now has regional distribution centers, bake houses, seafood processing facilities, a coffee roasting operation and field buyers who travel the world. And some of the natural food companies that supply Whole Foods are actually owned by such giants as General Mills, Kraft and Coca Cola.

Some critics have said Mackey "sold out," starting with organic food but having gone too corporate. Asked what his reaction to that is, Mackey says: "The first time I heard Whole Foods was getting too corporate, when we opened our second store back in 1982. As a company changes and evolves, some people are gonna always remember the good old days as being better."

Mackey insists he's made no tradeoffs as his business has grown. "America has a romance with small businesses. And it has mistrust of the large businesses," he says. "Whole Foods is out to prove that wrong. I don't see any inherent reason why corporations cannot be just as caring and responsible as small business."

Like his company, Mackey seems to try to strike a balance between a billion-dollar business and the good old days. He took five months off to hike the Appalachian trail, practices yoga and meditates on his ranch where he follows his own kind of animal compassion.

"Chickens are … they're beautiful animals. If you spend some time with chickens, you'll come to admire them. They have their social patterns. They're really interesting," Mackey says.

"There are gonna be people who say 'I'm not sure he's not a little wacky.' Do you get that from people sometimes?" Rather asks.

"You know, I've heard that a good part of my life," Mackey says, laughing. "But I found the more successful I've become, now I'm being interviewed by 60 Minutes.