Good stories come during a blogging strike!
   Former Medinge Group Brands with a Conscience winner Whole Foods Market has done something which we think is excellent thinking. During a computer outage, a West Hartford, Conn. branch decided to not charge its customers. It estimates that it gave away $4,000 of groceries, and had no repercussions from its top management.
   ‘It was clearly a snafu on our end, and it didn’t seem right [to make the customers wait],’ said manager Kimberly Hall.
   The call was made by assistant manager Ted Donoghue, so it seems this customer-first focus isn’t just lip service from Whole Foods—something we were conscious of when the company won its Brands with a Conscience award at this time last year.
   The good news, which was leading up to Eid and Christmas, made the Hartford Courant on the 21st (referred by Nick Smith at Life 2·0).
   It wasn’t a stunt: ‘It didn’t appear to be a big deal to Hall. In fact, neither the store nor the chain sought publicity for what happened,’ wrote the Courant’s George Gombossy.
   That four grand might have been a pretty big sum to give away for the affected customers on December 13 but the consequences have been far greater. Whole Foods genuinely lives the brand and that can only be a good thing as word of this spreads internationally. Posted by Jack Yan, 02:49  permalink

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