The Whole Foods effect: A kick-start for sales

The hardest market to crack may be the high-end grocer. But once a product gets in, it flies off the shelves.

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Tim McCollum was determined to get his chocolate bars into Whole Foods Markets, but he didn’t count on spending two frustrating years of sending emails and making hundreds of calls and visits to individual stores in an effort that seemed to be going nowhere.
Whole Foods "is hard to crack," said Mr. McCollum, who founded Madécasse, a Brooklyn-based company that has been producing chocolate in Madagascar since 2008 to help the island’s impoverished citizens.
Mr. McCollum’s persistence paid off. In 2010, the former Peace Corps volunteer cold-called the president—a fellow Peace Corps alumnus—of the grocer’s Whole Planet Foundation. He agreed to help open some doors.  Crain’s New York – Read more…​