WHOLE FOODS HAS MADE ORGANIC PRODUCE HIP. AND FOR THE SUPPLIERS, IT'S DEFINITELY A SELLER'S MARKET.
When Drew Goodman and his wife, Myra, started growing organic lettuce in their expansive backyard in 1984, they could jointly handle all the work their little two-and-a-half-acre plot could dish out. But they also wanted to grow the business. So, in 1986, they found themselves talking to Edmund Lamacchia, who worked for a small chain of natural-foods stores in the San Francisco area.

There they were, recalls Myra: the produce guy in his Birkenstocks and these two quasi-hippies peddling organic salad mixes. And Lamacchia's initial response was no bear hug. "I don't know if they'll sell," he flatly told the green entrepreneurs. But he decided to give it a try, and the Goodmans' first retail customer ended up doing a steady four to eight cases a store. "They were our biggest retail customers," Myra remembers, with the kind of excitement reserved for that first big fish that tugs on your line.
Now, Lamacchia has moved on to become national vice president of procurement, perishables, at the Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods chain. And he no longer harbors any doubts about how much consumers enjoy organic salads. The Goodmans have done well, too. They preside over an empire of organic fruits and vegetables - 25,000-plus acres of pesticide-free salad fixings, all sprouting under the Earthbound Farm banner. Earthbound funnels more than a million cases a year into Whole Foods' crisply laid out produce aisles, where legions of the organiscenti will roll by and assay the offerings before tossing something delicious into a shopping cart. Earthbound is just a giant-size example of the multitude of organic suppliers around the country that have benefited from Whole Foods' emergence as one of the hippest trendsetters in the grocery business.