Councilmember Kriss Worthington joins Halcyon Neighborhood Association co-chair Nancy Carleton and Aaron Vance to protest outside Whole Foods Market’s Emeryville headquarters Wednesday.Posted on 02/27/2009 10:28:21 AM PST by SmithL
Whole Foods Market, the national natural food supermarket chain that represents itself as supporting local communities, found itself under attack Wednesday when a large group of East Bay residents gathered outside its Emeryville headquarters vociferously protesting the company’s decision not to renew the lease of Ashby Flowers, a family-owned business that rents a small building in the corner of the parking lot at the company’s 3000 Telegraph Ave. location in Berkeley.
In an interview with the Planet at his company’s regional headquarters Wednesday, Whole Foods Regional President David Lannon said that the company was not renewing the lease since it had plans to open a coffee shop or juice bar there.
“We have been thinking about this for a long time,” he said. “We are not terminating their lease—their lease is up in July and we will not be renewing it.”
Demonstrating “flower power,” which included colorful posters and noisy chants, several dozen small business owners, elected officials, neighborhood group leaders and customers of Ashby Flowers—a neighborhood fixture for six decades—criticized Whole Foods’ decision, and called the issue another case of a “big corporation bullying the little guy.”
They labeled Whole Foods’ proposal to take over the space and turn it into a coffee or juice bar “deplorable,” especially since it would push out a small independent family-owned business, putting its future in jeopardy in a frail economy.
Founded in Austin, Texas in 1980, Whole Foods opened their second Bay Area store in Berkeley—the first one was in Palo Alto—in 1989, and owns the entire property, including the 27,000-square feet single-story store and the parking lot outside.
“It’s a small Whole Foods—having that 1,000 square feet gives us some additional space,” Lannon said.
Whole Foods currently employs 210 people at its Berkeley store and hopes to add 10 more to the proposed coffee or juice shop.
Lannon said that the company had informed the owners of Ashby Flowers, Iraj Misaghi and Marcy Simon, of their decision last April, giving them plenty of notice.
“We met with them last year and told them we were not going to renew the lease,” he said. “I made the offer at that time that we would help them relocate to another location in Berkeley but they turned us down. The economic downturn has created a lot of empty spaces in Berkeley and we would have been able to find a nice space for them easily. But they want to stay.”
However Misaghi and Simon, who are married, told the Planet during a demonstration outside the company’s red brick and glass building that Lannon had spent barely five minutes with them explaining the situation and had not offered any help.
“We got a letter from them around April or May informing us of their decision,” Simon said. “When we met with them a few months later they told us ‘this is our space, we run it, we will do with it as we choose.’ We told them that if we go anywhere else we will lose our customers. We are Ashby Flowers, we want to stay on Ashby.”
The couple said that Lannon had not given any specific reason for the company’s decision, and it was only later that Simon found out that the company planned to put a coffee shop there.
Lannon said that although he hadn’t been specific about the plan since it was still in a planning stage, he had told them what Whole Foods wanted to do with the space.
“There’s no conspiracy going on, we want to be as transparent as possible,” he said, adding that some of the ideas Whole Foods had for the space included its own coffee brand Allegro, natural fruit juices, raw almond milk and fermented kombucha tea which would help promote the store’s raw food diet philosophy.
Simon said that her flower shop had received a lot of support from the community—including Berkeley mayor Tom Bates—who wanted to see the store to remain at its current location.
Berkeley councilmember Kriss Worthington—who wore a poster decorated with white lilies—said that he and Bates were trying to meet with officials at Whole Foods to help them reach some kind of resolution with the flower store.
“This is holistic hypocrisy,” he said. “Whole Foods claims to be a humanistic and holistic company. They are neither holistic nor humanistic if they kick out a small business—especially in this economy. We spend a lot of time attracting small businesses to the city and this would hurt a lot. We need flowers, not financial foolishness.”
Nancy Carleton, co-chair of the Halcyon Neighborhood Association—a neighborhood group with members living within a 10-minute walk of the Ashby Whole Foods—said that the association’s members, who very rarely take a position on land use issues, were against the Whole Foods decision and wanted the supermarket to consult with the neighborhood before taking any formal steps.
“In a tight economy, why would you want to engender negative feelings in the very neighborhood that supports your business by continuing on the current course of replacing Ashby Flowers with an unwanted cafe in the face of such strong community opposition?” she asked. “Ending Ashby Flowers’ lease would break an important trust with your neighbors and undermine the very foundation of being a ‘good neighbor’ that Whole Foods Market has endeavored to practice since 1990.”
Ashby Flowers, which owns another flower shop, Telegraph Flowers on Telegraph Avenue, supports three families and hires six to eight employees depending on the amount of business they get.
Aaron Vance, an Oakland resident who shops at both Ashby Flowers and Whole Foods, said that Whole Foods was moving into the flower shop in order to increase their revenue.
“They say that they are doing well when everybody else is downsizing in this economy,” he said. “How is that possible?”
Company officials said that despite the slow economy, Whole Foods had reported positive quarterly earnings and was still planning to open new stores in Santa Cruz in March and in San Francisco's Noe Valley in September.
“It’s tough for everybody, but customers who are committed to health and wellness will still want to eat healthy,” Lannon said. “However, we are slowing down the number of new store openings.”
Around 2 p.m. in the afternoon, when the rally still hadn’t shown any signs of slowing down, Simon said that she had received a call from the economic development team at Whole Foods who had asked her to meet with them.
“I will meet with them as long as they allow someone from the neighborhood association to come along with me,” she said. “I am hopeful, but we will see.”
For more information on Ashby Flowers visit www.ashbyflowers.com.
For questions about Whole Foods’ decision, write to questions.berkeley@wholefoods.com.
Councilmember Kriss Worthington joins Halcyon Neighborhood Association co-chair Nancy Carleton and Aaron Vance to protest outside Whole Foods Market’s Emeryville headquarters Wednesday.
It is so funny that even a hippie-run outfit like Whole Foods is not politically correct enough in this Worker's Paradise.
Wow! Was there violence, or did they just trade laid-back verbal “barbs” over bong-hits?
Why don’t Hippies like Ben & Jerry’s move there? Oh right...
I think Whole Foods is being rather silly. They are in a no-win situation, so their best strategy is to find a way to lose the least.
Capitulating to a 60-yr mom-and-pop operation isn’t going to do any damage to their balance sheet at all. They ought to chalk it up to experience and try not to make the locals any madder than they are already. Angry people don’t buy health food, and they sure as Hell don’t buy coffee, almond milk and kombucha.
I have been predicting that the new Whole Foods in Santa Cruz will be a dismal failure. Their choice of location in the county is too far away from the hippie paradise of Santa Cruz city and too far north from the “monied” residents of South County. The site is smack in the middle of a very large (and poor) hispanic population.
AND........every grocery store that’s ever been in that location has failed. Almost like the site is cursed or something.
If the flower shop can get whole foods to change there mind because of public pressure isn’t this free speech in action? As long as the city dose not get envoled the flower shop has the right to try to win public pressure.
Kind of stupid for a business that’s as dependent on warm-and-fuzzy cultural cachet as Whole Foods.
When business wants you out; they don’t care how they do it.
What's even funnier is they proved that capitalism works, and socialism doesn't. It sounds as though the coffee bar will be more lucrative than the old lease with the flower folks.
When lefties collide!
Not so much a free speech issue as it is a freedom of association issue for Whole Foods. It is their property, and they are right to do with it as they please. This includes non renewing leases as they end.
The public backlash is the consequence of that expressed right.
I don't much care for the hippy-dippy attitude of the general Whole Foods ideal, but I do support them in their right of free association.
Whole Foods has to learn how to negotiate with these pukes. They should come back with a non-negotiable demand that the store only handle HYPOALLERGIC FLOWERS.
Lol! But remember Whole Foods forgot the first word in the company’s name: A$$.
That fella in the picture is not identified as a concerned Beserklian, but rather as a City Council-Critter. And Mister Bates is also using his his bully pulpit as Mayor to lean on Whole Foods.
The City is most definitely involved.
Where else would they shop?
Whole Foods Market announced last week that the company has reversed its plans to let the lease expire for its tenant, Ashby Flowers.
The supermarket chain had planned to take over the family-owned flower shop’s small retail space, located on the grocery store’s Berkeley property at Ashby and Telegraph avenues.
Whole Foods Regional President David Lannon had previously told the Daily Planet that the company was not renewing the lease, set to expire in July, because the supermarket planned to expand its operations by using the space for a coffee shop or juice bar.
But after a week of public criticism, the company shelved the plan and invited Ashby Flowers to stay.
In a statement sent out Mar. 5 by Jennifer Marples of San Francisco-based Koa Communications, Whole Foods’ PR firm, company officials acknowledged that they had arrived at the decision after listening to the public’s concerns.
. . .Excerpt: http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-03-12/article/32428
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