Sonya Gafsi Oblisk is a seasoned business leader with more than 20 years of experience in retail and consumer goods marketing and brand management. As Chief Merchandising and Marketing Officer at Whole Foods Market, Sonya leads merchandising, marketing, communications and e-commerce, as well as oversees digital product management for the company. Sonya is passionate about putting customers in the center of all decision making, and advancing Whole Foods Market’s mission as a company through its product Quality Standards.

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John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and I’m so excited to have with us today, Sonya Gafsi Oblisk. Thank you, Sonya, for joining the Impact Podcast.

Sonya Gafsi Oblisk: Well, thank you for having me. I’m very excited to be here today.

John: Sonya, you’re the chief merchandising and marketing officer at Whole Foods Market, which everybody has heard of Whole Foods. But before we get talking about what you and your colleagues are doing at Whole Foods Market to make a better world for us, to make better food for us to eat and enjoy, I want to hear a little bit about your story. Where did you grow up, and how did you get on this very fascinating journey?

Sonya: Yeah. Well, I’ll start by saying, often people tell me I have their dream job. So I have my dream job as well. I love talking about that. I love sharing a little bit about what we do at Whole Foods and why it’s so special. But my career journey, let’s see. Wait, where did I grow up? You asked that. I grew up in Washington, D.C., like the near-end suburbs. I actually went to school in the city. And for those that are familiar with Washington, it really is a very special place, not just because of all the military and the government, but more so, there’s a really big global community in Washington. I grew up surrounded by people from all different parts of the world, all different cultures, religions, ethnicities. My father was an economist for the World Bank. So I had a very special childhood in that I really did get to experience like the globe and travel to some incredible places back in the day when people didn’t travel there. So that really framed a lot of my perspective, just around people and interest in people and food, and in particular, agriculture was his specialty. So I picked up a strong interest for that and how people cook and live. In college, I actually studied sociology, which kind of ties back to my interest in people and understanding. I did a bunch of work, including an honors thesis, really digging into research and insights, which kind of led me into a path on customer insights and market research. It’s really how I started my career. A lot of people would, I guess, today call that role more of an analyst role. So I did that, but also did a lot of primary research that then led me, after a couple of jobs, back to business school, where I did a very traditional path of brand management and interned with big CPG companies and did that right after business school. Learned a ton about food manufacturing. Again, that was my space. Also, branding everything on supply chain and science and buying commodities and understanding the customer and how we think about new products. And that eventually led me to a place where I joined a retailer and took a job leading their private label business, which is kind of the interesting fusion of consumer product goods as well as retail. And so that started my retail path, and it started my retail path in merchandising. Which I then pursued and kind of had responsibilities, both in merchandising and marketing, which nine years ago then led me to Whole Foods, where I have been ever since.

John: Wow. Well, wait a second. Let’s go back a little bit. That’s a fascinating journey. So growing up in D.C., I grew up in New York City. So to me, as you said, they’re very analogous in terms of diversity of populations, openness to all different types of wonderful food and things of that such. And it’s an education unto itself. No matter where you get classically educated in each of those cities, just the education you get from the immersion of the globalness and diversity, it just enriches your life from the get-go.

Sonya: For sure. I always say I have such an advantage of just growing up with such a global perspective on people, on the economy, particularly about food, trade, and agriculture. It sets you up as you think about, like, what is out there in the world for me to do in my career, or how do I want to have impact? How many lives you can touch through various industries and roles? And that really was the connection and draw for me to build a career around food, whether it was on the brand management side, actually leading product, or even in the retail environment, whether it’s be in merchandising, around assortment, or in marketing, around telling the stories of the incredible products that we have and sell, and particularly at Whole Foods, all of the work that we’re really doing to change and improve our food system, which is so important for customers to understand that.

John: I love the story about your dad, because I can relate. I took my children on business trips as well. What’s your most memorable or a couple of your most memorable trips with your dad as a young lady?

Sonya: Gosh. Probably the most memorable one, and this I’m going to date myself because I’m very old, back to like the early or mid-80s, but traveling to Bangladesh, which at the time, in the mid-80s, I don’t even think people knew where that country was, what it did. But actually being on the ground there over the summer when it’s monsoon season, and their number one challenge as a country is really around water management. But just to see what that is like in a place where there’s very few roads, there’s very little infrastructure, there’s very little established economy and opportunities, and just an appreciation for how differently people live all around the globe is an incredible thing to see and internalize as a young child.

John: I love the word that you use, globe, because I never really used that word until I was in a business center with my son, who I pulled out of high school. We were in South Korea, and my partners were hosting a dinner for him. They’re part of the LG family. There was a gentleman named CM Koo, whose father was one of the six co-founders of LG. He said to my son, “Did you have a break in high school, or did your father pull you out?” He said, “No, my dad pulled me out and just said, ‘Come, you’re going to come with me, and we’re going to travel throughout South Korea, Japan, and China on a business trip.'” He said, “Tyler, let me just tell you something, that’s the only way you’re going to become a global citizen.” So from what you learned from your dad and those very impressionable trips that he took you on, did that carry on into your adult life? Do you still, with your husband and your family, still travel around the world to new and interesting places?

Sonya: We absolutely do. And it’s funny because when I got married, my husband was not a world traveler, and he quickly picked up the bug. So the more remote we can get to, the better. We love to go off the beaten path. We are also both very passionate scuba divers. There’s a great intersection between experiencing the beauty of nature and the natural world and trying to get off the grid. We never go on vacations to big cities or anywhere populated. We really do try to experience the natural world, be off the grid. One of our recent discoveries is the island of Tobago, which again, most of that island is actually National Park. They’re one of the first islands to preserve National Park back in the 40s. But we go to a little town, and there’s nothing there. And we’ll go there for two weeks and scuba dive our hearts out and just experience nature at the next level. And live simply and enjoy that, and just fit in with the town as much as we can. And that’s just, for me, such a special experience and what I look forward to in my free time.

John: Now, the last time I heard about Tobago is basically in the Beach Boys song. I mean, that’s how old I am. You don’t hear about Tobago, so it’s so much fun that you get to carry on what you learned as a child with your dad into your adult life.

Sonya: For sure.

John: That makes for a really interesting life, though, and exciting, too. So tell me, Chief Merchandising and Marketing Officer, what does that mean at Whole Foods? Are you the master gatekeeper of what’s on the shelves at Whole Foods? Are you the person that everyone with a new product and a new vegan cheese or plant-based product wants to meet and see, or your team? Are you the gatekeeper?

Sonya: I lead an incredible team of merchants that are the folks that everyone with a new product that wants to break through in the natural and organic space comes to see. We have an incredible team, obviously, which is our traditional merchants, our buyers. They’re the ones that decide what items we stock on our shelves every day. We also have a team at Whole Foods that is our quality standards team, and that’s something really unique to Whole Foods. You wouldn’t typically find this at another retailer. But this is the team that works in the industry, works with suppliers, works with scientists across the food sector to understand trends, new and emerging ingredients, what health implications are, what sustainability implications are. And they’re the ones that really establish our principles, our guiding principles, our quality standards at Whole Foods, which really filters in what is able to come into our stores, and more importantly, what we won’t sell in our stores.

John: Right, right. Well, I’m 62 years old, and I marvel every time I walk into a Whole Foods. When I was 17, I was a professional athlete, but I was getting too heavy to be good at what I was doing, so I had to lose a bunch of weight. And I became, first, a macrobiotic eater, and I became a vegetarian, and then soon thereafter, evolved into becoming a plant-based eater. I can’t believe all the stuff I missed most of my life that now is in Whole Foods that you can enjoy their plant-based. So talk a little bit about what are some of the trends and changes that you’re seeing in Whole Foods, comparatively speaking to when you started your journey in CPG, and then even when you started at Whole Foods nine years ago. Where are things trending, and where are things going when it comes to lifestyles and eating habits in the United States and beyond?

Sonya: Yeah, probably the biggest thing that we observe at a macro level is this shift from focusing on health as like weight control, weight loss, to more a broader focus on wellness, which is really about prevention. So instead of treatment, it’s about prevention of lifestyle-related diseases. It’s about nutrient density and optimal performance, whatever that looks like in your life, whether it’s around athleticism, whether it’s around sleep, whether it’s around mental acuity. There’s also such a bigger focus and awareness around how food is grown and raised and customers being more choiceful in how they’re making selections in their store to not only affect their own health and well-being, but that of the broader ecosystem, our broader Earth, our broader planet. So there’s an elevated level of awareness about food combined with a much broader and more holistic perspective around what it means to be healthy, which is rooted in well-being.

John: Sonya, just to frame it up, about how many people are underneath you that are these gatekeepers to the shelves of Whole Foods? [inaudible]. Is it 50? Is it 100? Is it 10? How many people about?

Sonya: We have several hundred merchants.

John: Wow. Okay.

Sonya: Yeah. We have several hundred merchants that work within our team.

John: Okay, so several hundred merchants are the gatekeepers. What would you say, does one out of every 10 pitches make it onto the shelves? One out of every 20? What’s the numbers? Is there some numerology? Because it’s so fascinating. It’s almost like a real version of Shark Tank that people try to get on, because your shelves are some of the most coveted shelves in the whole planet.

Sonya: Sure. Well, I’ll give you a related stat here. We actually have a wonderful program that goes by the acronym of LEAP. LEAP stands for our Local and Emerging Accelerator Program. And what that is, is it’s a program where all these food entrepreneurs can apply, be accepted, and then they actually work as a cohort. They go through a curriculum that’s really about developing their product and packaging and helping them scale from idea to actually be able to support the demand and service Whole Foods, either across several of our operating areas or even all of our stores. The last round, I think we had over 1,500 applications for what was about a dozen spots in that cohort group. So that kind of gives you an idea of the magnitude of interest, the incredible entrepreneurship that exists in this food space, and then also how hard and selective it is to get into a physical grocery store. I mean, we would love to carry lots more items, but we’re bound by our physical space constraints. So it’s always a balancing game to make sure that we are maximizing our relevance for customers, that we’re staying ahead of trends, and that we’re bringing them the best value possible.

John: If you’ve just joined us, we’re so happy to have with us today, Sonya Gafsi Oblisk. She’s the Chief Merchandising and Marketing Officer of Whole Foods. To find Sonya and her great team of merchandisers and marketers, please go to www.wholefoodsmarket.com. You don’t have to write that down if you’re driving or in the gym or walking your dog right now. That will be in the show notes. And everybody knows and loves Whole Foods. Before we get talking a little bit more specifically about trends and agriculture, talk a little bit about standing out. I’m sure among all the wonderful merchandisers underneath you, there’s a couple of legendary stories of someone pitching a product that should be on your shelves and did something in the meeting or post-meeting or pre-meeting that made them stand out and get your attention, beside the product they were selling. Do you have a legendary inside baseball story that you could share?

Sonya: I have a timely inside baseball story. I’m not sure that it’s going to hit you on the standing out, but it is about how we work at Whole Foods and the ethos of how we discover things.

John: Okay, good, good.

Sonya: And that is, you probably read in the news last week, a brand by the name of Poppi, which is a probiotic soda, sold itself to PepsiCo. So they closed the deal, that was close to a $2 billion deal. Poppi was actually discovered by one of our foragers. That is another role we have within our merchandising team is local foragers. So our local forager at the time, by the name of Kelly Landreau, was at the farmer’s market in Dallas, where she would often go to scope new items. She met Allison and Stephen, who are the founders. It was like, “This is an interesting product. I’d love to bring you into Whole Foods.” Cultivated that relationship and really helped them go from these probiotic soda that they’re selling in a mason jar to what is on shelf today in beautiful branding and packaging, in the cans that you see and enjoy at your local Whole Foods, the brand extension into new flavors. So just a lovely story.

But there are, I dare not exaggerate, thousands of those stories around. It really was the talent of our local foragers and our local teams that saw a spark of an idea, something differentiated, unique. I mean, that’s, to me, the coolest thing about so many of our products is they’re actually creating new categories. Probiotic soda wasn’t a category. We had one choice around, if we wanted soda, and that was it. And so just the ability to constantly innovate and create really new and interesting products and categories and have all that serve our higher purpose, which is to nourish people on the planet with great food that helps them on their wellness journey and helps them to be more food aware and is done in a way that is respectful and sustainable to our earth is like such a big win.

John: Shout out to Kelly. Hey, Kelly, call me. You deserve a commission. I can negotiate that thing. Just call me. My granddaughter, who calls me Poppi[?]. She’s five years old. She called me Poppi. When we sit down for dinner at her house, she always brings me a can of Poppi for herself and for me. So huge. So really, like you said, you took two trends: leaner, better soda and then the trend, of course, which I remember seeing it probably first in your stores of kombucha.

Sonya: Right.

John: Pretty much merge those two trends. So it’s not only about getting pitched, but you actually have proactively folks that you call foragers, great name, that are out there hunting for basically new products to bring into your stores.

Sonya: Yeah. And I would say, even beyond our foragers, even just our core merchants that own a desk, so to speak, a buying desk will work with suppliers as they come in with line extensions or new items and they’ll have a product. And they’ll say, “Well, that’s a great item, but why don’t you think about using this ingredient or this type of oil or something that will really help it stand out, be differentiated, be more on trend, and be more health forward, I guess is the best way to phrase it.” So there’s tons of work. Whole Foods is all about—one of our core values is win-win supplier partnerships. And so it really is. It’s never about the transaction. It’s not about the zero-sum game. Who can get the most out of a transaction? It’s really around finding the win-win. The more we’re able to do to elevate our assortment for our customers, that’s a win for our customers. That’s a win for the supplier. That’s a win for Whole Foods. And that’s where we really put a lot of energy is like going the extra mile to make sure that we are bringing the best products that we can and the most exciting innovation, so that we remain a place for discovery for customers who really are food curious.

John: Give us a little bit of inside baseball tips. I know you’re a [inaudible]. So now I’m the dean of the business school at Anderson and I say, “You’re coming over, and I need you to do a guest lecture on how, if you’re an entrepreneur, to get on the shelves.” Now, this can apply to a widget and Walmart. This could apply to a new food product and Whole Foods or any other great food retailer. What would be your greatest two or three tips for young entrepreneurs? You’re giving a lecture today at Anderson. What would you tell them on how to break in and break out and be noticed?

Sonya: Number one, just have a great product. I know that sounds very simple, but whether it’s food and it has to taste delicious, whether it’s something that just performance and make sure it actually performs. There’s no compromising on quality is probably the headline there. Quality, quality first is the number one thing. Number two is understanding what your financial model is and how can you bring the most value to customers, particularly in the state that we are, with economic uncertainty and customer confidence. Everybody wants to get a deal. I don’t care where you are, what your income level is. That is a human truth. Everybody wants to win. So everybody wants great value. And so really making sure that you’re optimizing your cost and your price and that you have a proposition that is going to be able to reach the broadest audience that you want to connect with. And then third, and really importantly, particularly whether it’s in food or general merchandise, is making sure that you can stand out in shelf. So that’s where it’s like great branding, like innovative packaging. You’re going to be sitting in a sea of other options, and why is someone going to pick you? And it’s really making sure that your brand, your product, is like super shoppable and has stopping power on shelf.

John: That is great, great, great advice. I love it. I love it, man. Anderson should have you back there. You should be giving that guest lecture. That’s what should be happening. Now, agriculture is in your DNA. Obviously, you spoke about your dad’s very important job at the World Bank and in agriculture. You grew up hearing the terminology and the importance of agriculture and travel with your dad. I’ve had a lot of guests on the show talking about all these new agricultural trends, climate-smart agriculture. It’s called all different things, sustainable agriculture. Talk a little bit about sustainable agriculture, climate-smart agriculture, nutrient-dense food compared to processed foods. And how do you communicate and educate the importance of these new trends to your clients so they’ll be more adventuresome to purchase some new products and help nourish their families even in a better way?

Sonya: Yeah, so I’ll start with climate-smart ag. The way we think about climate-smart agriculture at Whole Foods is it’s really a broader umbrella around farming and growing methods that are focused on supporting the sustainability of our overall planet and particularly our farms and farmland. Within that, the thing that people most are familiar with and probably most connected with is organic. Organic is one climate-smart farming method that really focuses on reduction of pesticides and any synthetics that may impact food health, but also our soil health. So that’s one area. An area where folks hear a lot about now is more of emerging space is really around regenerative agriculture, which is really farming and growing methods that they’re focused on improving soil health. So, again, it becomes sustainable because it’s improving soil health. It’s capturing carbon, so that’s helping our overall environment. And then also focused on biodiversity. So it’s not just about the one crop that we’re growing, but also about the overall ecosystem, including animals and pollinators and everything else that live in that area. So there’s like a big, big swath of climate-smart ag. I would also say like all of this, while many of it is new and trendy, it really is a back to the future in so many of these cases, particularly if you think about regenerative ag and historically how people, who really were subsistence farmers, diversified naturally. Like they had different livestock and they had different crops because they were actually supporting their family or their town or whatever it was. So it was just the natural way to do things, which actually had a synergistic benefit in terms of ensuring that the soil was healthy and strong. And to your comment around nutrient density, that is one of the exciting things that we are learning now. Our quality standards team is very much engaged in the industry and with scientists doing discovery in this space. But it’s actually that soil health impacts the nutrient quality of food. When you think about products or marketing, you’re always looking for the, “What’s in it for me, for customers?” And oftentimes, we have that dynamic tension on sustainability, that everyone wants to be more sustainable and support the earth. But when it comes down to making the decision of, “What am I going to buy? Am I actually going to change this habit?”, it’s sometimes harder to get people on board with that when you actually get to a space where I’m like, “Wow, if I buy this food that was regeneratively grown, it actually is even better quality, better for me.” There becomes a really compelling customer angle. So I’m excited for all the science and work that’s happening in this space.

John: I didn’t ask you, but I meant to, how many SKUs in a sizable Whole Foods store do you have? I was in your Buckhead store a couple of weeks ago.

Sonya: I love that store.

John: I love that store. And my home store used to be, when I lived on 65th and Broadway, was the AOL Time Warner Store downstairs. In LA, my home store is the ex-Mrs. Gooch’s, which is on… You know where that’s at.

Sonya: Yeah. [inaudible].

John: Yeah. And the one that’s on Gayley, that’s right on Westwood’s campus. So how many SKUs approximately is in a typical Whole Foods store?

Sonya: A typical Whole Foods, about 20,000 different SKUs.

John: And do you interrelate? Again, no trade secrets, but because of the shared ownership, do you interrelate also with the chief merchandising and marketing officer from Amazon? And is that an ongoing dialogue and discussion?

Sonya: Yeah. Whole Foods has maintained its independent supply chain in terms of how we source and buy products since starting the company. So nothing really changed on that front at the time we were acquired by Amazon [inaudible] about 8 years ago. One thing that I often tell people is like, there’s so much respect and admiration for Whole Foods within Amazon, particularly what we do around our quality standards, which guides how we select and choose our products, that we’ve been able to maintain our quality standards, maintain our independent sourcing of products throughout our entire journey. Now, there also are many brands, if I look at packaged goods, that you’ll also find on Amazon, that you’ll find in Whole Foods. And that’s great too. I mean, as part of our company’s higher purpose, nourishing people on the planet, our focus is really on having the biggest impact possible. We want to change the food system. We want more customers to buy natural and organic products. We want more customers to be food aware. And so anything that we can do to encourage that behavior, help suppliers grow and scale into a place where they not only can service Whole Foods, but they really can go out in to the mass market. To me, this goes back to like the win-win. That’s what we’re always looking for.

John: Talk a little bit about the high wire or balancing act that you have to do with your passion to drive quality ingredients, climate-smart agriculture derivative products, nutrient-dense products, more organic food, more plant-based food, and then the V word, value. How do you balance all that? Because you’re trying to deliver all that to consumers like me who love your store, who live in your stores two, three days a week. How do you deliver that? And how delicate is that balance?

Sonya: Yeah, it is a very delicate balance, and quite frankly, has been my top focus since joining Whole Foods. It’s great to sell the highest quality natural and organic foods. It’s not great when that food isn’t accessible and approachable to as many customers as they possibly can be. And so that has been so much of my journey over the last eight plus years here is really getting us to a place where we are as inclusive and as accessible to as many customers as we possibly can. Which includes, particularly in the last couple of years, our merchants have done a phenomenal job working with suppliers to really manage costs in an inflationary environment, which has resulted in us being able to lower prices of over 25% of the items in our stores, which is huge. We also continue to grow our private label business. We have over a thousand organic items currently in private label that are all at an incredible everyday value. We’ve also lowered prices on many of our private label items. So as I said, it’s really around getting as many customers as possible the opportunity to shop our stores, to realize whatever their health aspirations are as we all go on this journey of becoming more food conscious.

John: Yeah, the other day I bought a plant-based private label American cheese and Gouda cheese from Whole Foods and just delicious and very, very reasonably priced, really reasonably priced. I was shocked actually, the price.

Sonya: I literally love that you said that because we hear that all the time from customers. They’re like, “I had something in my mind from 5 years ago, 7 years ago, 10 years ago. I was shocked at the amount of sales and value.” And that’s been, particularly in this economic environment, customers are very tuned into sales and promotions. And so we really have put extra effort into ensuring we have like the most aggressive, most compelling weekly sales that we possibly can, and that they’re super relevant to the season. We’re offering deals on best of season produce on new items that really encourage and inspire folks to come visit the stores, but also in a way that feels like super permissible for them to buy and enjoy things that they may have just had old beliefs about, that were like, “Oh, this isn’t for me.” So thank you for saying that.

John: Yeah, no. And it goes back to Whole Foods. Because I’ve been so food-conscious most of my adult life since I’m 17 or so, I followed the beginning of Whole Foods to where you are now. And John Mackey obviously was a mission-driven person. He created a mission-driven brand to democratize the best quality food for the most people and make the biggest impact. It’s amazing. How does your leadership style fit in with the mission? But how do you also lead your merchandisers, foragers, and all the others that you influence to innovate and keep doing the great work you’re doing, but never lose your legacy mission, never dilute the great brand that the Whole Foods is?

Sonya: Yeah. Well, I had the fortune of working for John for over seven years, which is very unusual to actually have the opportunity to work directly for a founder for so long. He taught me many things about our culture here at Whole Foods. The first of which and why he was such a joy to work for was his focus on team member empowerment. One thing that when I think about John and working under his leadership is like he really did get the best out of people because he empowered them to hire smart people and empowered them to do their jobs. And to me, that’s something I really try to carry forward into our organization here at Whole Foods. So that’s one big focus. The other is just really, we have incredible core values, we have incredible leadership principles. So really staying anchored into those. I talked a little bit about win-win supplier partnerships, but I look at the win-win broadly across our organization, whether it’s putting together programs between merchandising and operations or how we’re thinking about our go-to-market plans for marketing for a holiday. There’s so many ways when you approach every opportunity as a win-win that you just create more abundance for everyone involved. The other big value that I’ll just highlight that really, I think, informs my leadership is around shared fate, which is something we talk a lot about at Whole Foods. We even talk about shared fate with self-accountability. So it’s, you’re thinking about others. Yeah, we live in a world and a team that’s interdependent, highly matrixed. It’s like, we can only get there if we all work together and have this common envision, this common end state of what success looks like. So working towards that, but also holding yourself personally accountable is a big part of being able to live this value of shared fate.

John: Well, just the last two comments you made, I think, are absolutely spot on and brilliant. I just hung up a call before we started this conversation, Sonya, and we were talking about collaboration. And of course, the iconic Musk’s of the world, the Gates of the world, the Bezos’s, and the Michelangelo’s of the world still exist, but they’re the anomalies now. The true people and brands that are making the biggest impacts are collaborators. They don’t see the world as zero sum. There’s so much out there for all of us. And the more you collaborate, you can actually make a faster, bigger, and a more everlasting impact. So I love that you keep coming back to that. The fact that we are interdependent, but we have to really collaborate more, I just think is so spot on.

Sonya: And it’s so much of what we do to just raise the bar overall. By the work that our merchants do with our suppliers, it actually changes some of what those suppliers do in terms of what products they’re bringing to market. And that’s where it’s like shared fate. We’re raising the bar, and we are having impact, which is what we all strive for at the end of the day.

John: And that’s why you’re on the Impact Podcast.

Sonya: Absolutely.

John: And that’s where your journey is. Sonya, you’re speaking of podcasts, we’ve been doing this podcast about 16 and a half years or so. And we’re so, so thankful for your time today, but also some of your colleagues have been on before and we want you to continue to come on. But I do want you to talk about the new podcast that Whole Foods Market has, Beyond the Board. What is that about? What can our listeners expect? And why should we listen to the new podcast that Whole Foods Market has come out with? We’re going to put that podcast in our show notes so you don’t have to write it down or stop your car, do whatever, stop whatever you’re doing now. We’ll put the Beyond the Board link into our show notes.

Sonya: Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you. It’s so kind of you to bring that up today. I appreciate the plug. We are very excited about that. I think where we started our conversation today, you were asking a lot of questions, which we get all the time of like, what is the journey of a founder like in the food space, there’s so many options, so many hurdles. Like how do they actually break through? What was that winning idea? How did it scale? That is exactly what Beyond the Board is about. It’s talking with founders about their journey, commercializing their products and getting it to a national level as a brand. I will say I’m biased, of course, but it’s fascinating to me that the level of diversity in journey and what motivated the original idea, some of it is just about passion for food. A lot of it is founders actually addressing their own health concerns. They couldn’t find a commercial solution, so they created one themselves. But just hearing all of that and then understanding what it took to build those brands, that is what we cover on Beyond the Board.

John: We got to have as guests now, the Poppi, the husband and wife Poppi team.

Sonya: Oh, already done. We did that last week, John.

John: Oh my gosh, I got it tuned in. Oh my gosh, I’m behind. We like to always throw in a plug on this show for sustainability, and everything Whole Foods represents is impact and sustainability. Any major trends in sustainability that you’re the most excited about, Sonya?

Sonya: Yeah, well, probably for us, when I talk to customers, there’s a couple of things that folks really connect to or would love to be able to impact further with their grocery retailers, specifically Whole Foods. One is around recycling. I think that’s one area where customers are most attuned to, like, “I want to minimize my consumption of single-use plastics. And then I want to be able to recycle all of the products that I possibly can.” So we’re very mindful of that, even behind the scenes in our operations, even things as tactical as the paper that we use for price signs. We make sure it has a certain recycled content, or the containers where you’re at the hop bar shopping for. So we really think circularly and hold ourselves accountable and to a higher bar. And we want to be able to give that information and solutions to customers who are mindful of that space. The other one that I am specifically passionate about, given my background, is also in food waste. So ensuring that we are minimizing any type of food waste coming out of our stores, that we are redistributing as much food as we possibly can, or repurposing or converting that food when possible. So lots of work going around there. We have two cool programs that are customer facing that have really helped us over the last year since we’ve launched them at Whole Foods. One is we partnered with an app called Too Good To Go. And through that app, customers can go online and pick surprise bags. So it’s basically food that you buy at a super discounted rate from a retailer. They usually have you go and pick it up at the end of the day. A lot of restaurants often do this. So at Whole Foods, we have goody bags from bakery, and we have goody bags from prepared foods. The value I believe is over $30. Customers buy it for less than $10. And it’s a great way for us to not throw away food. It gets in the hands of someone that will appreciate it. I think we hit a milestone about a month ago that we actually saved 1 million meals through the Too Good To Go app, which was very, very exciting for me. The other thing, which depending on the time of day when you’re shopping at Whole Foods, particularly if you’re there in the morning, you might see stickers on certain products that are, we call it Enjoy Today, 50% off. So those are products that it’s like they’re at their last sellable date. The food is still good, but we want to make sure instead of if nobody buys that, we don’t want to have to throw it away. We would rather offer it at a discount to either our team members or to our customers to purchase. So there’s a million other things, but very, very proud of the work that we’re doing to reduce food waste.

John: We’re going to put that—what is it, Too Good…?

Sonya: Too Good To Go app.

John: Too Good To Go, we’ll put a link to that app in our show notes as well. Let’s go back again. Now you’ve been asked to come back to Anderson for a different reason. Entering freshman class who now wants some advice, some guidance on the next four years and beyond. And obviously, you’ve just convinced me over the last hour that you do have the dream job that I want actually as well. So since you’ve made a great case, share some advice with the incoming class over at UCLA, just freshmen right out of high school, before they even get to Anderson, they’re going just in there. But they’re part of a new generation of young, wonderful people that just don’t want to make a living, but they want to make an impact, just like you’re doing with all your colleagues at Whole Foods. What advice is it? There’s so much confusion or let’s just say a paradoxical information out there now. Some people say real-life experience is much better. You don’t need to go to what is classically known as higher education anymore. Higher education is better. Some mix thereof. What say you?

Sonya: Yeah, what say me? Well, I took a path of classical education. It served me well, not because it necessarily led me to a specific job, but I think it helped me develop a lot of critical thinking skills. And most importantly, and kind of what I look for in talent is folks that have really strong learning agility, meaning that they can be exposed to new things, quickly learn and understand. And my advice to anyone early in their career is just be open to any and every opportunity. Life goes full circle many times. The broader your perspective, we talked about global perspective earlier, the broader perspective, the more diverse experiences you have, it ultimately leads you to more doors being opened as well as helps you develop a very unique perspective on solving problems and identifying opportunities, looking at a much more cross-functional way than those folks that kind of, “I’m going to do one thing, here’s my one path, I’m going to stay very narrow.” So to me, a great career starts really broad and then you tend to develop an expertise or a skillset, it becomes a little more narrow as you grow and advance. But in the beginning, really being open to things that you may not have considered because as you stated earlier, there’s so many jobs, how do you even know what these jobs are? I always meet people, and I’m like, “Wow, what an incredible job, I didn’t even know that was a job.” So it really is about staying open-minded and working hard.

John: It sounds like the seeds for your great advice, your really wise advice, and I love that, really started with your dad on those travels, those trips.

Sonya: Well, he would love to hear that. Thank you for saying that.

John: I was going to come back and say, “Has dad lived to see all your great success?”

Sonya: Absolutely. He continues to be my number one fan.

John: Oh, I love it. Shout out to your pops, that’s awesome. And that is just awesome. Well, Sonya, you are just nothing but amazing. And like I said, now I see how you got the Chief Merchandising and Marketing Officer job at Whole Foods. For our listeners and viewers, to find Sonya and her colleagues in merchandising and marketing and all the important and sustainable and impactful work they’re doing at Whole Foods, please go to www.wholefoodsmarket.com. Sonya, you’ve been more than generous with your time today, an hour plus, but more important than the generosity of your time, thank you for making the world a better place.

Sonya: Well, thank you for having us. Thank you for letting us share the Whole Foods’ story. And thank you for being a dedicated customer. I love talking to our customers, hearing feedback, and appreciate you so much.

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