Are Whole Foods employees reliably hipster-ish? If so, why?
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Whole Foods employees in cities like NYC, SF, or LA seem to draw heavily from the hipster/alternative-appearance crew. What's unusual is that even the Palo Alto Whole Foods & Columbus Ohio Whole Foods (where hipster density is somewhat sparse) manage to hire similar folks to rival their hipster cousins in bigger cities. Is there some management value/practice that explicitly slants hiring in this direction? I'm impressed that they've managed such uniformity across diverse cities.
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Answer:
Team Members themselves get a voice in who gets to join their respective teams full-time. Plus there are incentives for team members referring their friends to get hired. Finally, we are a value-driven company, and folks who share those values likely work better in the store with their peers, or maybe stick around longer. Those three things probably skew the results so that the staff of any given store might be considered slightly "homogeneous" when viewed from afar... The big mistake you're making though is to lump the "hipster" term on all WFM employees. Our 70,000+ team members aren't "uniform" in any sense of the term!
Pat Grady at Quora Visit the source
Other answers
I'm not sure if I totally understand what 'reliably hipster-ish' means but, as Pat said, It does seem that one's values, and the non-verbal ways one communicates those values to others, probably have some effect on why so many 'alternative' people choose to work at whole foods. From my perspective, the grocery chain does seem to make a point of embracing, perhaps even showcasing, individual expression and alternative lifestyle choices in addition to valuing aesthetic choices such as lighting, ambient aroma, attractiveness of staff, layout of food, etc...and it does make for a more pleasant shopping experience. As a business strategy, like many retail stores, I'd imagine WF wants to have the people who work at the store reflect the values and preferences of their target consumer base in order to enhance the idea of a community. This community (broadly speaking) would consist of; -those who see themselves as different than the mainstream -those who value beauty and/or novelty as much as other factors in both people and products -those who believe that choosing a product is a quandary in which ethical, social and nutritional considerations, as well as quality and price, factor into the decision As a semi-reluctant customer (my girlfriend prefers we shop there and it's close to our apartment), I do sometimes feel like I'm being conned and often wonder if it's really worth paying $22/pound for wild-caught tuna or $10 for organic honey. However, I must confess, when I do shop at at normal supermarket now, I feel slightly depressed and repulsed when I walk past the meat and produce sections.
Joseph Linnett
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