Amazon’s $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods sent shockwaves through the retail industry in 2017. But in a revealing new interview, the man who built Whole Foods from a single Austin store into a natural foods empire says he never wanted to sell to Amazon at all—and only did so because activist investors threatened to seize his board, fire him, and sell the company anyway.
John Mackey, the 72-year-old cofounder and former CEO of Whole Foods, disclosed the pressure campaign in an interview on the Habits & Hustle podcast with host Jennifer Cohen published Tuesday. Mackey described a tense 2017 confrontation with representatives from Jana Partners, the activist hedge fund that had acquired an 8.8% stake in the then-struggling grocery chain to become its second-largest shareholder.
