[4][9] In 1978, John Mackey and Renee Lawson borrowed $45,000 from family and friends to open a small vegetarian natural foods store called SaferWay in Austin, Texas (the name being a spoof of Safeway).

[10][11][12] Two years later, Mackey and Lawson partnered with Craig Weller and Mark Skiles to merge SaferWay with the latter's Clarksville Natural Grocery, resulting in the opening of the original Whole Foods Market, which included meat products.

According to the complaint, the FTC believed that the proposed transaction would violate federal antitrust laws by eliminating the substantial competition between two close competitors in the operation of premium natural and organic supermarkets nationwide.

Both Whole Foods Market and Wild Oats stated their intention to oppose the FTC's complaint vigorously, and a court hearing on the issue was scheduled for July 31 and August 1, 2007.

The Court of Appeals ruled that "premium natural, and organic supermarkets" ("PNOS"), such as Whole Foods and Wild Oats, constitute a distinct submarket of all grocers.

[57] In February 2017, Whole Foods said it would close nine stores and lowered its financial projections for the year as the natural-foods company struggled with increased competition and slowing sales growth.

[citation needed] In late April 2017, Whole Foods reported their sixth consecutive quarter of declining sales and announced that the company would be closing nine stores: two each in Colorado and California, and one each in Georgia, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Illinois.

Whole Foods says that the company is committed to buying from local producers that meet its quality standards while also increasingly focusing more of their purchasing on producer- and manufacture-direct programs.

[87] In April 2007, Whole Foods Market launched the Whole Trade Guarantee, a purchasing initiative emphasizing ethics and social responsibility concerning products imported from the developing world.

The criteria include fair prices for crops, environmentally sound practices, better wages and labor conditions for workers, and the stipulation that one percent of proceeds from Whole Trade-certified products go to the Whole Planet Foundation to support micro-loan programs in developing countries.

[93] A January 8, 2007, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report listed Whole Foods Market as the second-highest purchaser of green power nationwide, citing its actions as helping drive the development of new renewable energy sources for the electricity generation.

[94] In August 2024, Whole Foods dairy suppliers were planning a pilot program with Windfall Bio, a startup company with financing from the Amazon Climate Pledge Fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Mayfield, and others, to add microbes to the soil of their farms that consume methane emissions to produce fertilizer.

[112] Whole Foods announced in June 2006 that it would stop selling live lobsters and crabs, but in February 2007, made an exception for a Portland, Maine, store for its ability to meet "humane standards."

In January 2015, a group of activists organized under the network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) released a video of laying hens from a Northern California farm that supplies eggs to Whole Foods.

In the video, which featured footage of crowded, dirty henhouses and injured birds, DxE contended that the hens' welfare was severely compromised, even though numerous boards had labeled the farm as "Certified Humane.

[126] In 2015, during a PETA investigation of Whole Foods pork supplier Sweet Stem Farm LLC, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, video showed pigs living in a dark structure, not allowed access to the outdoors.

The protest campaign followed a multi-year investigation, where PETA revealed that monkeys in Thailand are forced to climb tall trees for hours and to pick coconuts used to produce products such as milk, flour and oil.

This was in large part due to Whole Foods' involvement, including highlighting the company's failure to warn consumers the fish contained potentially dangerous levels of cancer-causing chemicals known as PCBs.

Author Michael Pollan has contended that the supermarket chain has done well in expanding the organic market but has done so at the cost of local foods, regional producers, and distributors.

[139] Ronnie Cummins, national director of the United States Organic Consumers Association, opined that "Whole Foods Market now is a big-box retailer – and it's much more concerned about competing with the other big boxes than issues of ethics and sustainability.

In March 2008, following a study by the Organic Consumers Association, reports of high levels of 1,4-Dioxane found in body care products at Whole Foods prompted the Attorney General of California to file a lawsuit against the company for a violation of Proposition 65.

The action claimed that 365, along with brands sold by other cosmetic companies, did not include a label warning about the chemical; spokesperson Libba Letton stated that the company did "not believe that these products represent a health risk or are in excess of California's Proposition 65 Safe Harbor level for 1,4-Dioxane" while consumer activist David Steinman urged them "to stop treating the inclusion of cancer-causing chemicals in their products as 'business as usual.

[164] The lone commissioner voting against the proposal, Charles Hines, stated that approval of the petition could create a domino effect leading to the destruction of other protected areas.

[168] In April 2020, Business Insider revealed extensive monitoring of stores to identify and target unionization, using a metric based on racial diversity, employee loyalty, turnover and more.

[171][172] On November 6, 2020, the House of Commons of Canada unanimously adopted a motion "to condemn Whole Foods and its owner Jeff Bezos for banning its employees from wearing poppies on their uniform".

[179] Whole Foods' 2023 impact report states that higher-welfare breeds constituted only 4.42% of fresh chicken units sold in 2023,[180] just one year before the company's commitment deadline for reaching 100%.

[183] The chain has also won a number of awards for social responsibility including a first-place ranking by Harris Interactive / The Wall Street Journal in 2006[184] and British trade magazine The Grocer named it the "World's Greatest Food Retailer" the same year.

[199][better source needed] A member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) wrote that Kulture's CEO and founder Peter List had "in his effort to 'persuade' workers...engaged in 'patently unlawful' activities" during a 2007 organizing campaign.

To help employees learn about products, the company has instituted a mentoring program and developed an online portal called "Whole Foods Market University" to aid in training.

This led to the Federal Trade Commission challenging the eventual merger with Wild Oats on the basis that it violated antitrust laws, essentially eliminating competition and inflating prices in the health foods market.