Mackey to Present Keynote at Fancy Food Show

John Mackey, co-founder and co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, will be the keynote speaker at the Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco.

Mackey will talk about his new book, “Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business.” His address will cap off a full menu of education sessions focused on succeeding in the $75 billion specialty food industry. The keynote event is free to show attendees, and a free copy of Mackey’s book, to be released in January, will be available for the first 200 attendees. The session is Jan. 22 at 8:30 a.m. In related news, Mackey will also deliver the keynote address at the 2012 Private Label Trade Show next month.

Mackey co-founded Whole Foods Market in 1980 as a single store with 19 employees in Austin, Texas, and helped build it into a publicly held chain of more than 335 natural and organic food stores and more than 70,000 employees and $10 billion in sales last year. In 1981, Austin’s worst flood in history almost bankrupted the original store, and community efforts to save it shaped Mackey’s leadership philosophy to “do right by your stakeholders and they’ll do right by you.”

“Mackey has helped change the face of natural and organic as well as specialty food retailing,” said Ann Daw, president of the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade Inc. (NASFT). “With unprecedented interest among food entrepreneurs and consumers in socially conscious enterprises, he is sure to provide insight into what it means to make a difference through business.”

Now in its 38th year, the Winter Fancy Food Show will take place Jan. 20–22, 2013, at Moscone Center.  NASFT owns and operates the Winter Fancy Food Show.