Whole Foods bullies New Seasons

Whole Foods has subpoenaed New Seasons, a Portland natural foods grocery chain of just nine stores, for highly detailed financials, market plans, and other business data that should never be released to a competitor.

It's being done in the name of supporting Whole Foods' defense against the FTC antitrust investigation with a promise not to misuse the data, but as the New Seasons CEO points out, this is a bit like trusting the fox with the henhouse.

Please do read the blog post and review the subpoena at the link above, and please consider whether Whole Foods merits your business while engaging in predatory business practices.

To help increase awareness, you can Digg the original article or upvote it on Reddit. There's also a lot of activity about the topic on Twitter, and retweets seem to be getting some attention. Whole Foods does have a fairly well-monitored Twitter account and seems to be paying attention to the noise; in fact, Paige, the marketing person responsible for their Twitter feed, has already responded with a well-written (if insubstantial) comment on the New Seasons blog.

(crossposted from my livejournal)