ANITRUST CASE HITS WHOLE FOODS

By Nathaniel Luce

Publication: THE TENNESSEAN

The Federal Trade Commission wants to bring Wild Oats back to Nashville and other cities across the country months after Whole Foods acquired its competitor and converted many stores to its own organic supermarket brand. “The eggs have been scrambled, and it’s hard to know how they would be unscrambled,” said LUKE FROEB, a Vanderbilt associate business professor and former director of the bureau of economics at the Federal Trade Commission, commenting on the case. “This would be unprecedented in antitrust law, to force Whole Foods to build a whole separate brand.”