"WildOats" news and stories

Awesome: the idea behind bulk food. Cheaper, more control over the quantity, easy.

Not-so-awesome: the collection and storing of bulk food. Most supermarkets provide plastic bags, which are not only bad for the environment, but are messy to store, can break or leak easily, and typically result in a pile of unusable crumbs.

But a friend of mine has come up with an easy solution that I'm jealous I didn't think of first: she bought a few of these Droppar storage jars (at left) from IKEA (although any small metal or glass jar with a lid would do), and brought them to her local Whole Foods store. The cashier first weighed the jar itself, which she wrote on a piece of tape and placed on the jar lid.

Each time my friend buys in bulk, she simply brings her jar with her, writes the checkout code on a sticker which she keeps on the jar, and brings it to the cashier, who subtracts the weight of the jar and charges her for just the food. Easy, environmentally-friendly, and easy to store when she gets home. (Another idea? Just wash out peanut butter or pasta sauce jars, place stickers on the sides, and reuse those).

Warning: this should work at Whole Foods and Wild Oats, or other similarly-minded food stores, but I don't know if other stores would agree - you'd have to call your local supermarket out find out.

Why would a company CEO go on a financial web site and post about his company under a pseudonym?

That's what the Federal Trade Commission is investigating. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has admitted that it was he who posted under the name "Rahodeb" (an anagram of his wife's name) on Yahoo's financial boards. In fact, he didn't just post about finances and stocks in general, he specifically posted about rumors that Whole Foods might buy Wild Oats. This was in January of 2005. Whole Foods bought Wild Oats a few months ago for $565 million.

Or should I say, "might buy them." The FTC is trying to block the agreement and is using this new info for their case. Mackey insists he did nothing wrong since all of the stuff he talked about was public knowledge and harmless.

[via Boing Boing]