Last month, Whole Foods came out with a brand new organic product – a refrigerated almond milk under the 365 label.

The company claims that this is the industry’s first-ever private label, certified organic, refrigerated almond milk and I believe what it is saying. I cannot recall seeing another one.

Why is this product so novel?

Well, it is novel in terms of what you can get in the supermarket.

Prior to this product being available, our only option (aside from making it at home) was buying boxes of almond milk, which sit on the shelves in the dry goods aisle.

These boxes are kept at room temperature until you open them. Then, they go into the fridge. The shelf life of these boxes (before they are opened) is approximately one year.

Whole Foods is now offering a much more fresh alternative. Its almond milk is kept cool and has an expiration date of roughly two months.

The taste: Extremely good because of its sweetness and full-body texture. Read more »

Dangerous products from China seem to be the norm these days.

U.S. consumers have had to deal with the toxic drywall disaster.  Then, we found out that Chinese-manufactured toys and trinkets contained cadmium instead of lead.  Cadmium is a known carcinogenic.

Oh, and how about the milk that killed several babies and sickened thousands because of the toxic powder that was used.

With doubts swirling that the organic food from China wasn’t really organic, the USDA has banned a major certifier, the Organic Crop Improvement Association (OCIA), from operating there.

The reason: OCIA hired employees of a state-owned agency to inspect state-controlled farms and processing facilities. There was absolutely no independence and a serious conflict of interest at hand.

A video had been circulating on Internet recently about how Whole Foods was using “organic” food from China yet the certifying agency, Quality Assurance International, who was hired by Whole Foods and whose certification seal was on the package, claims it never did any inspections in that country. This created a mini-scandal that Whole Foods refused to comment on. Read more »

When I launched livingmaxwell at the end of December, I realized that I needed to get my act together in regards to social media.

Having immersed myself in this space over the past few months, I now pay particular attention to how other organic food businesses use social media.  My overall impression so far: I am extremely unimpressed.

Here are two exceptions.

Whole Foods

No surprise here.  Whole Foods leverages social media better than most companies in the world.  Not only were they a very, very early user on Twitter but how many corporations have their own Flickr page?

These people know what they are doing and their stats confirm this.  235,000 fans on Facebook and 1.75 million followers on Twitter. Read more »

I am writing from Orange County, CA where I am attending the Natural Products Expo West trade show in Anaheim which started yesterday.

So, on Wednesday I made a visit to the local Whole Foods in Tustin to pick up a few things.  I love the experience that each Whole Foods delivers but this store is the most mind-blowing one I have ever stepped foot in.

I never thought I would say it but I must confess.  I now have Whole Foods envy.  How lucky are the people that get to shop here whenever they want.

Aside from the fact that it is a 68,000 square feet spectacle, I saw something that I had yet to see before — a special section where customers can sit down and consult one-on-one with a Healthy Eating Specialist.  All for free.

Several weeks ago, I profiled Whole Foods’ new Health Starts Here initiative and have been in constant conversation with many different store managers trying to get the inside scoop — do employees like it or not (in particular, those who work in the meat department), how are they going to roll it out, what are the internal training programs, etc.

One piece of feedback that I kept hearing was that there would be in-store training for customers on the program to answer their every question. Read more »