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Wholly Ineffective: Lefty Boycott of Whole Foods Has No Noticeable Financial Impact

By Tom Blumer

Whole Foods (WFMI) announced its financial results for the quarter ended September 30 yesterday. The quarter closed about 50 days after outraged leftists called for a boycott of the grocery chain to retaliate for a Wall Street Journal op-ed written by CEO John Mackey. In that column, Mackey identified “Eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit,” asserting that:

  The last thing our country needs is a massive new health care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction — toward less government control and more individual empowerment.

Well, if there’s so much support out there for statist health care, you would think that the Whole Foods boycott dedicated to punishing an opponent would have had a significant impact on the company’s most recent quarterly results.

You would be wrong:

  Whole Foods Market Inc.‘s (WFMI) fiscal fourth-quarter earnings soared as revenue climbed and unusual items took less of a bite from the bottom line, leading the high-end grocer to declare that its sales have “officially turned the corner.”

  The company expects the sales growth to continue in its new fiscal year, with increases of 5% to 8% in overall sales and 1% to 4% in comparable-store sales. Whole Foods noted that total sales are up 5% in the first five weeks of the fiscal year, with comparable-store sales up 1.6%. Analysts were recently projecting a sales increase of 6% to $8.54 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

  .... With shoppers looking for bargains and grocers engaged in a full-scale price war, Whole Foods has been balancing its upscale image with a value message in its marketing. While it has made progress—offering meals that feed a family of four for $15—the company has still pared store openings and suspended its dividend.

  For the quarter ended Sept. 27, Whole Foods reported earnings of $36.4 million, or 20 cents a share, compared with $1.5 million, or 1 cent a share, a year earlier. The latest quarter included a gain of 1 cent a share related to inventory accounting, while the year-ago included a host of charges that brought earnings down about 15 cents.

  Revenue climbed 2.3% to $1.83 billion. Comparable-store sales fell 0.9%. Meanwhile, identical-store sales, which exclude eight relocations and two expansions, dropped 2.3%.

[...]

It’s impossible not to conclude that the establishment media chooses to cover or not cover boycotts based on their degree of political correctness, and not on their level of participation or demonstrated effectiveness.

Trying economic terrorism to suppress free speech should be prosecuted, IMO.
The American people saw through the leftie scam.