For John Mackey, popping into a Whole Foods while traveling triggers a twinge of nostalgia. “It’s a little weird,” said the empire’s founder and former chief executive, who resigned in 2022 after 44 years at the helm.
“I didn’t feel relieved,” he said. “I don’t think I’m really sad either.” Instead, McGee explained, he recently stopped wealth‘s New York office to discuss his new memoir, The Whole Story: The Adventure of Love, Life and Capitalism“Just like a child. When the child grows up, I still love my child. But the child has his own life, his own destiny. I am very proud of the way it grew and the way it lived.
In his book, Mackey, 70, details the company’s birth and early growth, from its humble beginnings as a hippie in a three-story Victorian house in Austin, Texas, to its astonishing growth to become one of the largest companies in the United States. The 540-store chain in the UK and Canada was acquired by Amazon in 2017 for $13.7 billion.
“This is my last gift to Whole Foods,” the Houston native said of his book. “The idea is that this is our story, not just the story of this big company – it didn’t start out that way. It has a history and a personality. Writing this letter provided McGee with a personal closure “I had to relive a huge part of my life,” he said, adding that he also decided to write the book because he wanted to “inspire people.”
As for what motivates the entrepreneur, the list is long—psychedelic drugs, which appear multiple times in the book, are at the top.
“People may mistakenly think I’m tripping all the time, but that’s not accurate,” he said. “It was always a spiritual thing for me.”
open and tune in
McGee counts the number of times he has taken LSD on one hand and recalls each time as a revelation — starting when he was 19 and taking LSD with friends while a student at Trinity University in San Antonio. “It took me off my path in life” from becoming a doctor or a lawyer, as his mother wanted, he recalled. “I realized there was a deeper spiritual reality… I started reading Eastern religions and Eastern thinkers.” He began studying philosophy at the University of Texas, “searching for the meaning of life.”
Years later, while smoking MDMA (also known as MDMA or Molly) at a New Age party in Austin, he recalled: “I realized—and I never forgot—that love was the most important thing in life. Things. Nothing compares to it…it makes me want to create a more loving culture and Whole Foods Market. Next up is a love for New Age Bibles. A course in miracles, Decades later, after reading Michael Pollan’s work, he began meditating seriously How to change your mind, Take a guided MDMA-psilocybin tour to help Mackey through the transition away from Whole Foods.
“I overcame some damaged relationships and was able to heal. That was a very, very smart thing to do,” he said. McKee also became committed to breathing exercises, a practice rooted in yoga that he had begun exploring in the 1980s, and which had an equally profound impact on his psyche.
Courtesy of John Mackey
“Breathing exercises are a very simple, safe way to have a transcendent experience,” says McKee. “People don’t realize that you can develop a deeper connection with your soul just by breathing in the right environment.”
McKee’s other epiphanies were what he calls “food awakenings.” The first was in 1976, when he moved into a vegetarian co-op, serving mostly vegetarian meals, and opened his first health food store. Another occurred when he became vegetarian, inspired in part by PETA and other activists who targeted Whole Foods for working with a supplier involved in foie gras production.
“It’s a process,” he explains of his transition to vegetarianism. “I read all these books—Animal Suffering, Dominance: Human Power, And there were a lot of other people – a thought started coming to me from the bottom of my heart, which was, ‘Why aren’t you a vegetarian? Why are animals killed? Why? It never left. Over time, this feeling grew stronger and stronger until I realized that I knew this was the right thing for me personally.
Enter love.life
Now, McGee is excited to share his revelations with the rest of the world through his newest venture: Love.Life, a health club brand that, once legal, will offer treatments like meditation, breathwork and psychedelic therapy.
“Our first project will be in California. It’s not legal there yet, but it’s just a matter of time,” he said. “You know why? Because the science shows very clearly that the combination of psilocybin and MDMA is very effective in treating PTSD.
Love.Life “is a continuation of my personal higher purpose in life. It’s part of my own hero’s journey,” he said, lamenting that most people don’t see a doctor until they’re sick, while our medical system often “just treats Symptoms of chronic disease”.
McKee’s idea is to create a “one-stop holistic health membership club,” the first of which will open on July 9 in El Segundo, California. , including Pilates and fitness centres. The spa offers massages, facials, wraps, peels, cryotherapy, an infrared sauna and a hyperbaric oxygen chamber; and three pickleball courts, as McGee is a recent convert.
“The first time you play it, you’re so happy because the threshold of enjoyment is just beginning,” said McGee, whose other fitness goal is long-distance hiking, a passion that only grew after completing the Appalachian Trail . “You’re immersed in nature for weeks at a time, your heart rate changes, your awareness changes,” he says, not to mention “many of my best ideas come to me when I’m out hiking. of.
Love.Life will also have a medical center staffed by doctors with both Eastern and Western training. “Ideally, our vision is that people will come on board and we’ll take them through a series of tests to establish a baseline of health,” he said. “The average person doesn’t know if they’re perfectly healthy because doctors say ‘you’re doing great,’ but we want to know where you are.” The test results will be used to develop precise, personalized health plans. “If they need rehab, we help them rehabilitate,” McGee said. “If they’re looking for peak performance, we can get them to peak performance. If they’re a baby boomer, we can help extend their health span and longevity.
Finally, there will be a health-focused restaurant — one that won’t be plant-based but “plant-oriented,” which McKee explains as a compromise.
“Love.Life already had a vegetarian restaurant in Los Angeles that failed,” he said. “By offering a plant-based menu with the option to add responsibly sourced, high-quality animal foods to achieve a higher level of animal welfare, we are inclusive of a wider group of members and their dietary preferences. While we deeply value The plant-based community, and I personally will always choose to be an ethical vegan, but we need to satisfy the market we find in order to have a successful business.
McGee’s goal is to grow Love.Life’s first location into a chain — one he hopes will do what Whole Foods has done for supermarkets.
“Young people have no idea how bad supermarkets are. They are so scary that people don’t want to go in,” he said. That’s why in the first few years of Whole Foods Market, people came in and were blown away.
That’s the reaction he hopes “Love.Life” will get.
“People would say, ‘We’ve never been to a place like this, this is really cool. Why hasn’t anyone done this before? In retrospect, it’s obvious that this should have happened.
