Hey All, We just found out our store (Store Total Sales averages $900,000 week) in NorCal is piloting GroBody merge starting first week of May. More details next week.
15 replies (most recent on top)
The online vitamin retailer WF purchased....
mynaturalmarket.com
http://www.whois.com/whois/mynaturalmarket.com
Registrant Organisation: Whole Foods Market Services, Inc.
Registrant Street: 550 Bowie St
Registrant City: Austin
Registrant State/Province: TX
Registrant Postal Code: 78703
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.5124774455
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Email: email@wholefoods.com
Hey- what about Global WB...Maren and her merry band in the top heavy Global Office....shakin in their shoes yet? WRiting on the wallllll and the worms ate into their brain.....
5-shc ...wow...thank you for the insight. I had no idea 365 stores were being run without teams - more like a one store labor budget I suppose. Not suprising at all.
Well..it has been a fun ride.
To: Post ID: @GViy69k-5iop: our WB sales are about $92,000 weekly.
Thanks to everyone for your comments!
I'm a TL, so I have no secret inside scoop. Just prefacing what seems pretty clear to me, with the truth that I don't have actual facts.... just a growing pile of indicators.
The mergers will be happening across the board in time regardless of the size and volume of the store. Whole Foods is trying to centralize and streamline their operations. Company wide product unification last year. This year and next year will be company wide team unification. If an allotment is made for higher volume stores, it is most likely going to be a "Whole Body Associate" on the Grobody team (much as Dairy often has a lead). It has also been made clear that this is only the first round of mergers and that they will be seeing how they work, before merging higher volume stores. I continue to hear on a regional level that it is working (whether this is true, or just towing the company line, I don't know)
Be prepared. I mean that as friendly advice. There were plenty of indicators that the cuts we had in October were coming (PBS questionnaires on their job duties and time taken on each, open marketing positions left vacant for months leading up to the layoff, social media control being primarily yielded to an outside company, etc). Once the layoffs were implemented many of us were shaking our head's saying we should have seen it coming. In the last 2 years many many Whole Body departments have been remodeled and shrunk, Whole Foods has purchased an online Vitamin retailer. Planograms, and less control in customizing our product mix to suit our community have been pressing hard in the last year. More recently, newer stores are opening as Grobody teams. 365 stores are leaving behind the team model.
To be honest, it is more than Whole Foods though. In conversations with vendors, it seems like much of the natural products industry is struggling to find it's footing in a much more competitive atmosphere.
Whole Foods has to adapt. I get it. It's a shame that the choices the upper echelons of leadership are choosing to make, are ones that will rob Whole Foods of it's strengths (customer trust, TM engagement, customer service, a connection to the community, etc). We are shifting to a paradigm in which cheap, easy labor (no restrictions, part time) is valued over pricier, more experienced, and more dedicated labor. Personally, I think it's the wrong move. What I find more abhorrent is the lack of concern many at the top seem to have on the effect this is having on people who have dedicated themselves to a company and it's forgotten ideals.
But I digress, be smart. Make a plan. If you want to stick with Whole Foods, start figuring where you want to land and how you will get there. If you are sitting in your TL spot on a Grocery, Whole Body, Meat, or Seafood team, and thinking you will be untouched due to your store's volume, you will likely have a rude awakening in the next year or so. Take care of yourself. Look at and consider your options within and without Whole Foods.
Whoa! I am surprised by this happening in a $900k/week store. How much is the weekly sales in your WBOD department at this $900k store anyway? (I realize WBOD sales vary greatly across the country.) It is perfectly understandable in a slow store or a store with low WBOD sales to roll WB into grocery and eliminate extra TL and ATL payroll. (I always felt a lot of teams like bakery should have been eliminated long ago in most stores.) But, as a current WBTL in a store where WBOD weekly sales are in the $100k range, I felt safe from a GROC/WBOD merge. If this GroBody thing becomes widespread there will be a bunch of people like me (and my ATL) joining those MKTG TMs in the unemployment line. And the decline in knowledgable customer service will accelerate. Some say GROC and WBOD are going to someday be a Target-style experience: automated buying, overnight stockers and zero customer service during the day. To me that just does not sound like the way to take on the increased competition we are having.
Seafood and meat will be combining on stores 400k or under in sopac.
The PN is already doing this. It has started through attrition in our slower stores, Chambers Bay, Mill Plain, Greenway. Going forward new stores will have this same model Bellingham. The hard deadline for mergers on stores under 500k will be this fall.
I suspect regional chose Monterey as the pilot store because the TL in WB recently transferred to another team. We were an easy pick.
Not sure about the atl positions yet. We'll find out more when regional makes a visit next week.
WOW. And here I thought ATLs were safe. Sucks to suck
They gonna make tl and atl interview for fewer positions..those who dont get it will have to step down and take pay cut..i think they get around severance in this manner
What about TLs and ATLs for each team?
What's Grobody merge?
Which store?
We are already doing this now in smaller volume stores in the MW