Whole Foods: 'Our forager count almost doubled in the last year'
While Whole Foods has accelerated its shift to more centralized buying following its acquisition by Amazon, Epley said it was still committed to finding local products, and had 24 'foragers' across its regions scouting for new brands: "[This focus] hasn't changed since Amazon came in. The forager count almost doubled in the last year."
He added: "Our local signage went down a little bit [following the Amazon deal] but now we're actually amping that back up and you'll see more signs with pictures of people that actually produced that product."