US Foods

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

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Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Before Thrive Market, “accidental entrepreneur” Nick Green ran his first business from a Harvard dorm room.

Thrive Market’s millennial CEO on building a "Costco model" for healthy eating

Features

It sounds terrible to say this, but the way I described that first entrepreneurial journey was failing my way to success. I made every mistake in the book from bad hires to micromanaging to operational mistakes. My name is Nick Green, and I'm the co-founder and CEO of Thrive Market, and this is my secret to success. I grew up middle class in middle America. I had a mom who grew up in a large Mexican American family and kind of saw firsthand in her family the facts of lifestyle diseases related to diet, and my mom, this is, you know, again 90s in Minnesota, had this vision for basically charting a different course for our family and then I got to see how hard she had to work to make that possible. So we were that weird house on the block that had no sugared cereal. No soda. I saw her driving across town to find healthier options. I saw her clipping coupons to make it all work on a budget, so it was really seared into my brain at an early age that being healthy is important, but being healthy costs money. My first ever job was actually starting my first company. After doing really well on the SAT, I started teaching SAT classes in high school. And that evolved into my first business when I was an undergrad at Harvard called ID Insiders. So I call myself an accidental entrepreneur because I didn't think about it as starting a business at the time, but it was really interesting as an entrepreneur running my business in parallel. A lot of what I was learning in the business, it was kind of unlearning things I had learned in school and so probably the biggest lesson that I learned as an entrepreneur during those four years was that the path to success is really littered with failure. And you know, a lot of it was thinking that because I was the expert on the content of what we delivered the test prep, that I would also be the expert on the business. So early on I was trying to do everything myself. I was just learning through my own mistakes. We got bought 3 years later by another test prep company and then you know in the back half of that year sort of looking at what my next thing was going to be and I knew I wanted to do something that could have even more scale potential and more impact and so I met Ginard, my first co-founder. Very randomly we got introduced through a friend. He pitched me initially as an angel investor, and he had this big idea to make healthy living accessible to anybody by bringing a Groupon like buying event model to healthy nutritious food. By the end of the meeting, I was basically pitching him on like let's do something together in this space. I don't know about Groupon for Healthy food. Let's whiteboard this a bit, and two weeks later we are iterating on different ways that we might be able to approach affordability. And that was when we stumbled into the Costco model and how powerful membership could be as a way to bring prices down, create engagement, create community. We had some real challenges from the get-go in fundraising, talked to 50+ VCs, all of whom rejected us. We had some real challenges in building the site. Neither of us had a technology background, but looking back on it, I think the thing that really kept us going was that strength of the mission. We knew the mission from day one. And it was our North Star and the way I described my first company at IB Insiders was I was kind of on a roller coaster. And even though I was buckled in, I didn't know it. So every time we hit a turn, I thought I was going to fall out. I think the difference with Tri Market was having, you know, done a startup before. I knew I had a seat belt on and I knew that a lot can go wrong and you can still figure it out. And so what we're trying to do is offer a solution so that you don't have to just go to what's closest to you. You don't have to spend an arm and a leg to afford the price premiums for healthy products in those grocery stores. Our mission since day one has been to make healthy sustainable living easy, affordable and accessible to anyone. So we started a petitioning the USDA back in 2016 to accept food stamps online. Fast forward eight years we became the first pure play e-commerce retailer to be able to accept Snap and EBT online. So there are a number of barriers to getting healthy and what we found is that price is a very important barrier, but I would say the biggest barrier actually. is more around the difficulty of knowing how to navigate this landscape of healthy food and in some ways the internet has made that more treacherous because you've got, you know, people from every different direction giving health advice, you've got Companies that have products that probably aren't healthy but are marketing them as healthy and so I think many, many people are just plain confused. I like, do I want to eat more meat or less meat? Is fat bad or carbs bad? Does organic matter or doesn't it matter? And it's enough to make someone's head spin. And so a lot of what we're doing at Thrive is making that process easier by letting people outsource their trust to us so that they know every product reaches this high bar of quality that we are 100% focused on making the product safe, sourcing them ethically so that you can feel good and proud of whatever you buy, and so we're really proud of what we've achieved over the last 10 years and yet at the same time we're very cognizant. That we are just getting started. There are 100 million US households, we only have 1.5 million members. We are doing hundreds of millions in sales, but there is a $1 trillion CPG market and from a mission standpoint, we have so much further that we can go to truly make healthy living easy, affordable and accessible. So we are really excited to reach a milestone, but also even more excited about what the future holds and knowing that we are still in the early innings.

Brian Cornell, Chairman and CEO, Target Corp.
Steven Williams, Chief Executive Officer, PepsiCo Foods North America
In conversation with: Diane Brady, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Connecting Culture and Performance

Conferences

Jason Buechel, Chief Executive Officer, Whole Foods Market Calvin Butler, Chief Executive Officer, Exelon Moderator: Indrani Sen, Senior Features Editor, Fortune; Co-chair, Fortune Impact Initiative  

Impact Initiative 2024: The Price Tag Of Sustainability

Photography by Rebecca Greenfield/Fortune

We're going to start out with some questions that I have for Jason and Calvin. But we also would love to hear some questions from the audience. So I hope you can all start thinking of questions for our esteemed guests. Um We'll be sending uh mics around a little bit later on. Uh I'd love to start Jason. Um You've talked about democratizing healthy grocery shopping in this era of high inflation about price reductions that whole foods has carried out kind of across the board. Calvin. I know that affordability is also very important to you. Given that 22% of exelon's customers are economically disadvantaged. How do you balance your sustainability goals with addressing the needs of financially stretched customers or put another way? How do you resist the temptation to compromise on your sustainability goals in order to offer your customers lower prices? Maybe we could start with you, Jason. Yeah. Yeah. Happy to and, and thanks for having me here today uh for us, you know, balancing and finding those win, win win solutions has been a really important part of whole foods market since we opened our very first store 44 years. Ago and practicing things like climate friendly agriculture have been an integral part of our company's offering, whether it was organic back when we first started to supporting things like regenerative today as well. And for us, it's finding the balance of how do we make sure that we can support value and quality for our customers. So I've been really proud of the work that we've been doing in reducing over 25% of prices across items within our stores, doubling the number of promotions from 2020 3 to 2024. And for us doing all of that without sacrificing quality. So ultimately, holding to our high quality standards and our goal is to find those win, win wins where we can balance impacts to the environment, do great things for customers, suppliers and the environment alike. Thank you, Calvin. Do you want to dive in on that one? Sure. First off, let me begin by saying good afternoon and thank you for having me. Thank you so much for being here. And I love the way you frame the question because it's not a either or it's definitely an and you started off with a statistic that was 22% of my customer base is from under resource communities. So as a utility, if I'm going to serve my customer base and recognizing the 22% and then I also have some of the highest income zip codes in the country as well. And my number one job as the CEO of a utility company is to serve all of my customers. So for me, it's definitely an and, and I have to do this in an equitable manner. And what I mean by that is that as we begin this energy transformation and I'm investing capital, I can't leave any neighborhood behind. We have the privilege of serving the nation's capital and I'll use them as an example for those of you who go to DC. The second ward is one of the most affluent wards in the nation's capital. The eighth ward is one of the most under-resourced. Their needs are very different, but I have to serve both of them and that's why afford affordability must be at the top of that list of everything I do. But this is what I also know. And we talked a little bit about this, all the things that I get to do and all the things that I'm being asked to do, if I don't keep the lights on and the gas flowing, it doesn't matter. So that reliability and resiliency also must be at the list. So when you talk about priorities, it's a one in one a and depending on who I talk to, it's what their priority is and how I need to show up. Right. Right. We talked about storytelling quite a lot. Um Calvin, some of Exelon's initiatives like rec conductor or investing in battery technology are kind of backend changes. Um, they're certainly hugely important but they're not necessarily that visible or easy to explain to customers. Um, and I'd say the same Jason, um, of initiatives at Whole Foods, like your approach to food waste. Um How do you think about telling customers those stories? And I guess as a part of that, like how much appetite and curiosity do your customers have for, for hearing these stories? Depends on the customer. Some of you want to hear about it each and every day and you want to start with, hey, what are you doing to help me get a battery charger at my home to charge my car? Some of you are saying, what can I do to get my solar panels put on my house quick enough. But once again, different customers have different priorities and I love the way you framed is that so much of what we do? You don't even know, but it's setting it up for the future of that grid, the resiliency of that grid. You think about what's happening right now and I heard one of the panels a couple of panels ago, talk about Hurricane Helene and now Milton coming through, that's when you talk about the grid and it's at the forefront, you're feeling it right now in real time. And you're saying, why wasn't that utility ready for this? Because that's the question that everyone's gonna ask when they get to the third or fourth day without power. And by the way, you're all very impatient right about now and you, you know that hurricanes coming and after about 48 hours, you lose all patience, but that's ok. We know that. So having said that, what are our investments that we're making today to make that grid more resilient? And I look at resiliency as the ability to get back online sooner rather than later. And that's what we're trying to do. And I think for us, you know, we're fortunate, we have probably some of the most passionate consumers as it relates to sustainability, uh you know, sustainable seafood sourcing animal welfare standards. And so in many cases, we've got a set of customers who are coming to us because we do the homework for them in this space. There's a lot of customers who are, you know, coming because we have great deals because we have high quality food. And so being able to tell the story of the why, why we're doing the work that we are, I think becomes really, really important. And I think whether it's whole foods and other brands, our responsibility is to help tell that story and bring the transparency to customers. So they understand the impact that they have based upon their decisions and whether it relates to, you know how we're reducing food waste to reducing our carbon emissions to ultimately helping support sustainable waterways and oceans, that impact is really important to understand as we make those buying decisions. And so I think it's our job to help tell the story, work with brands and producers and farmers and understanding why we're doing the work that we are. Right? I guess, I think sometimes customers can become a little cynical about this. We, we talk about these things so much. You hear terms like greenwashing thrown around. How do you, how do you kind of factor that in to these conversations? How do you, how do you make it, you know, make people feel this is important without necessarily kind of making them feel that they're lectured to or uh are kind of being uh being told off in some way. Well, I think that's a really important uh balance that we have to strike. And, you know, one of the things that we put into place is we require, you know, third party certification. So take, for example, Regen, if we're the only national retailer right now that we have to ensure that all of our products that have regenerative on our labels are third party certified. And so we've got a series of certifiers that we work with in this space. And so what we believe we need to do is make sure that there's integrity that stands behind it. Um And so customers don't have that distrust. And as I was saying earlier, we want to do the homework for our customers, so they don't have to is the ultimate goal. And so our goal is to help build that trust. And I think one of the other ways we can do is start to talk about the impacts of us not supporting this. You know, one of the things that is the true reality here is, you know, our food systems are under jeopardy right now. Uh If we don't do something different in the next to 100 years, the products that we know and love today, we're not going to be able to grow all of them. And at the same time, we're losing the nutrient density in these products. So every single year, we're losing that nutrient density from our soil. And so we have to bring different practices in place. And so I think a big part of it is at the same time not being alarmist, but also also like pointing out if we don't do something different, this is a situation we're going to be in. And I would just say for Exelon, our goal is to lead with transparency. Every year we issue our sustainability report, we just did it and you can go online and pull it up. And in that sustainability report, you will see that we've reduced our business driven emissions significantly since 2015. And we focus on that. We were also one of the last companies we were slow out the gate in announcing our path to clean our uh emissions driven goals. And we did that for a very uh very real reason, is that anything that we said we wanted it to be measurable and attainable. So when I tell you that we're going to be net zero business driven emissions by 2050 the first reaction I got when I came out the gate was that's kind of late. But I said I got a line of sight to 80% of that. By 2035 the last 20% is going to be technology dependent. So I didn't want to state a goal that I didn't have a clear line of how I would achieve it. And then I also challenge people that once we say we're at someplace, ask us and we can show you the data to back it up and that's what's important for us as a utility company because we're never going to tell you something that we cannot do or have a line of sight to achieving. So a boa our chief sustainability Officer is here and we take very, we're very diligent about what we put out in the public space because we never want that credibility to be eroded. So it's very important for us. Absolutely. I'm gonna now say if there's anyone who has any questions, I, I see a question over here. Um I'd ask that we have some mic handlers who are gonna come over. I just ask that you stand and, and please state your name and the, and the company that you're representing here. Sheikh uh fascinating panel. Uh We are an era where the businesses and the government should work together for the value creation. Now, in the context of uh the, the electric industry, Exelon or in the food industry and in the, the things that are going on under the Department of Justice, the Trust Arena. Um What are the one or two strategies that uh you are looking into to make sure we work with the government to drive value because we alone cannot do it together. Because at the end of the day, the customers, communities, education institutions, every stakeholder matters. If you don't mind, I'll, I'll start, you go ahead. Let me just capture to your point. Public private partnerships are critical to any level of success we're going to achieve. And I give this administration a lot of credit for the passing of the Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act because that is those were critical elements to spearheading everything that we did and how we partnered with our communities directly. I don't benefit from that. But what it has done is accelerated, the adoption of electric buses, it's accelerated buildings going all electric, it's accelerated um decarbonization in urban areas and rural areas that would not have happened because of the expense of getting it done. And what I've shared with Secretary Granholm and others is that not only are those billions being put to work, we're partnering and putting our own capital on top of that. And it's a true example of one plus one equaling three. And that's the benefit of that partnership. And we talk regularly with not only Secretary Granholm at doe, but Secretary Romano at Department of Commerce. I noticed you had Ali Z up here earlier. Those are conversations on a weekly basis that we're doing and we're having because this administration is all into it. Um Now I wish it was happening quicker and the challenge for it happening quicker is that there's not always an alignment between federal legislation and what's happening at the state level in terms of the regulatory policies. So the utilities may be looking to run and put that money to work, but state policies are slowing it down and we're working to get that done. And I love this question. I would love to just throw in. Also. How are you thinking about November? I'll jump in on the food side. I'm gonna jump in on the food side. So for us to be able to protect the future of our food system, we have to change our farming practices and it's going to require the public and private sectors to work together, you know, today that we have so many different incentives and subsidies that are actually incenting the wrong behaviors of where we need to go. And so it has to be a collective set of work. And I think what's more important than November is we need bipartisan collaboration to support this. You know, I oftentimes share, you know, we have red and blue states that are some of the largest producers of produce and goods that we have in this country from our farms and we have to work together to find solutions so we can help bring these changes and put them into place. Um Just picking up on that. One of the things that you've said, Jason is uh that there's a danger of a kind of whack a mole approach across industries where efforts to solve one problem in one industry can end up causing problems in the other. In another industry. A classic example is uh corn ethanol, the biofuel uh leading to uh they were impacting food production, um government uh you know, working with the government as a part of that. Do you see any kind of path of working across industries as the Kia Car Johnson talked about a little bit earlier also? Yeah, I think we have to, you know, and some of the examples that you just mentioned, you know, we're in a situation right now where across this country, only 1% of our family farmlands are certified organic and the pressure in many cases of farmers to, you know, move to producing corn for the purposes of energy is increasing and the demand is going to get higher. If you look as an example, the airline industry has got a number of solutions where corn is going to be a major dependency in helping support some of their sustainability goals. And it's great on things that they're able to do. But we have to say, what is that going to be doing in our food systems? And so we need support both across industry, but we also need help from some of our government partners here to make sure that we've got the right incentives in place so we can protect our food systems and continue to support other industries in meeting their goals as well. Do you want to weigh in on that one? Kelvin? I'm teasing. So I think it applies to, is there a part of that from the energy perspective, you'd like me to dig in on? Well, I mean, I think that the the collaboration across industries in particular, do you see, I mean, is that real or is that kind of pie in the sky? No, it's definitely realistic. I mean, you look at we're at the forefront for at least the last 40 to 50 years where we're seeing load growth in the electric sector and you talk about uh data centers, the load growth, depending on who you talk to and doing that in a sustainable way in a clean way is critical because depending on once again who you talk to could be 3 to 5 X over the next decade. And data centers for our National Security for information flow based here in the US is going to be critical and how we do that and still manage to provide adequate clean energy to those uh data centers is important. So that's where the collaboration and partnership really shows and the security of the system. And fortunately, most of you don't have to think about protecting the grid, but the grid is critical infrastructure. When you look at any major disturbance across the world, the first thing they go after is the grid. And so that's also something that we put at the forefront. So not only with the data center developers, but also with the national gov federal government in terms of making sure those assets are protected, that collaboration and partnership is critical. Absolutely. So with our, our last couple of minutes, um I'd love to just end on a note of, you know, what are your biggest concerns about the future? But also what makes you feel optimistic? Yeah, I'm happy to, to jump in. I kind of mentioned, you know, a little bit earlier, we have to protect the future of our food systems for future generations. And that's going to require us to implement more climate friendly agricultural practices overall. And I'm hopeful that we're actually going to be able to achieve that because as I look at some of our future generations and specifically Gen Z, this is something they really care about. 70% of Gen Zers support climate friendly agriculture practices. 55% of them even will pay more for those products. And they really want to make sure that there's authenticity behind it. And so I'm very hopeful that we'll be able to help address this in the future. I love that. So I will tell you my, my biggest concerns and it wouldn't surprise you is the reliability and resiliency of this system, affordability and resource adequacy, meaning that having enough power to supply all the things that you as our customers want. And depending on the audience, it could be 11 A and one B because at different points, different customers. But those are the three issues that I think about on a regular basis. Why am I optimistic? Because here in the United States, we operate one of the most reliable and resilient grids across the world. Sometimes it may, may feel that way, but we have to get better because you as customers, your expectations are very different for us today than they were a year ago. And we're being asked to do different things with the grid today and tomorrow than we ever had to do so, we have to get better. So I'm optimistic because I think we, I know we'll be able to step up. And the last thing I would say I'm optimistic is the workforce of the future picking up what Jason just said, I started my opening a stem center in an elementary school in Prince George's County and to see those young elementary kids just really go to those stem packages with the teachers, not read the instructions and go right in where the rest of us my age were looking like, OK, what do we do here? They're excited about science, technology, engineering and math. All we need to do is empower them and give them the resources and they will be our future scientists and mathematicians in the future. So that gets me excited. Love that. Well, thank you so much for the panelists and thank you so much to our audience for your.

Whole Foods’ 46-year-old CEO doesn’t believe in skimping on PTO. Instead, Jason Buechel emphasizes taking time off, and even changed the PTO policy to ensure staff are taking vacations away from work.

Whole Foods’ 46-year-old CEO works out twice a day and ‘fully uses up’ his PTO. His key to work-life balance

Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel emphasizes taking time off, and even changed the PTO policy to ensure staff are taking vacations away from work.

Whole Foods’ CEO ‘fully uses up’ his PTO. His key to work-life balance

Whole Foods’ 46-year-old CEO emphasizes taking time off, and even changed the PTO policy to ensure staff are taking vacations away from work.

Whole Foods’ CEO's key to work-life balance

I'm probably very abnormal here. I pretty much am in the grocery store at least twice a day, every single day. So it's about 14 times a week, I guess, which is probably atypical and in some weeks it might, might even be a bit more. Hi, I'm Jason Beagle Ceo of Whole Foods Market. I'm 46 years old and this is my daily routine for me when I wake up. Ultimately depends where I'm waking up. I travel a lot. So I am typically up no later than six o'clock, central time. Uh, if I'm traveling on the west coast, sometimes I'm waking up a little bit earlier. The first thing I do is I do look at my phone ultimately checking to see what emails might have come in. Sort of any key updates that might be taking place. I like to run in the morning. So I also like to run when there's at least a little bit of light. I try to run somewhere between five and six days a week. It sort of depends upon my schedule how my body is feeling and I typically like to do it in the morning, however, sometimes during the summer in Austin, it's so humid in the morning. So I'll do my run much later at night. I run anywhere between four and 10 miles during the week. I usually do one long run, which somewhere would be 1011, 12 miles. I have a great protocol hack that I started doing several years ago. It involves doing 30 minutes of infrared sauna and doing hot and cold plunges in it sort of contrast basis. And so start with the 30 minutes of infrared sauna. Go to the hot and cold tubs. I do three minutes in cold, three minutes in hot, three minutes in cold, three minutes in hot and finish the three minutes in cold. And while the cold is definitely painful, while you're doing it, your body feels amazing afterwards. And I have some of the best nights of sleep after finishing this and it feels great for my body, especially after doing some of my long runs during the week. I've done six marathons so far, but I haven't done one in a long time. May decide to pick it up again. But right now, it's not where I prioritize my time. So what I eat in the morning and even sometimes how often I eat in the morning. Depends upon what my workout routine is. If I'm throwing in a longer run on a particular day, I might have something to eat just before the run and then I'll have something to eat afterwards before going on a run. Sometimes it's as quick as having some peanut butter. It could be some oatmeal. It could even be a smoothie. I usually love to finish my workout though with having a smoothie after I get back lately, I've been really loving blending together some mushroom vegan vanilla protein mix with oatmeal with bananas and peanut butter and then some chia seeds. It is absolutely delicious. Most of my meetings will typically start between eight and 830 every morning on a typical day where I'm not traveling and visiting stores. I probably have about 10 meetings. So anytime I'm in Austin, I'm always in our office. So I happen to be in Austin all five days of the week, which is really rare. I come into the office every single day, but I do a lot of travel. So for me, it's making sure I can get out and visit our stores, our suppliers, many of our different partners wherever I'm at. I'm typically trying to figure out how I still juggle the day to day meetings and the business rhythm that we have. And so depending upon where I'm at and what the schedule looks like I could taking meetings from the hotel or from a store or even on the go. One of the things I love to do is actually pick out my own lunch and I happen to work above one of the best places to eat in Austin which is our flagship store on Lamar. And so I love to go down myself to be able to go pick out whatever I'm eating. I typically am having our salad bar is one of the things I have just about every single day for lunch. So I typically eat vegan for breakfast and lunch at night is typically when I'll add in more animal proteins. I lean heavily towards fish sushi is one of my favorite foods. And so I'm overall, I'd say a very healthy eater. I really care about what I'm putting in my body. And I ultimately see the impacts of, you know, how it impacts my performance, my happiness, my well being and even my sleep. And I'd say most of the time, uh my, my schedule for meetings usually wraps up around 6 p.m. or by six pm. Again, sometimes on the time zone of where I'm at, but I would say I'm usually done by six. I like to sort of unwind after work and it could be a walk. It's one of the times where I actually work out at the gym. So I'm more of a runner in the morning. So if I'm going to go to the gym and get some weights in or do something else, I usually love to do something active. If I'm traveling, it's typically just uh walking around my hotel or wherever I'm staying, uh just to stay active and it's a great way to actually see some of the cities that I'm visiting. I'm sort of someone who's a little, sort of a night owl, but I've really come to appreciate making sure that I, I'm well rested, um, every single day, so I'm sort of working backwards. Um, from when I wake up, if I can get a solid six hours of sleep, I'm really replenished and ready to take on the next day. I think when I'm, uh, you know, doing more strenuous activities and, and, uh, you know, maybe a long run, that's where I'm looking for a few extra hours of sleep. I do think I have a great work life balance. I look at it as having an enriched life and for me it's making sure I've always had time to unplug and make sure that I'm taking care of myself and especially when I'm traveling a lot and making sure I'm taking vacations, time off giving my body an opportunity, you know, after, you know, long weeks of travel and things like that to get the right rest in place. One of the things I was mentioning earlier is during the week, getting six hours of sleep, I typically get a little bit longer on the weekends, which is great for helping catch up and supporting my body.

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