letter to whole foods
TRANSCRIPT
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8/8/2019 Letter to Whole Foods
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Li Zhen (Lee) Yu, Owner
Jian An (John) Chen, Owner
Tian Fu Restaurant
446 Washington Street
Wellesley, MA 20482
September 20, 2010
Laura Derba
Regional President
North Atlantic Region
Whole Foods Market
125 Cambridge Park Drive
Cambridge, MA 02140
Dear Laura,
We read your recent letter to the Wellesley community. You have showed willingness to listen to, and
dialog with, our community and us. We have been trying very hard during the past couple of months to
have a direct dialog with Whole Foods, including sending a letter to you personally and to John Mackey,
CEO. We had not heard from anyone at Whole Foods - no phone calls, no emails, no personal meetings,
and no formal offers. Your letter is the first such open and direct communication. We were pleasantly
surprised and encouraged.
We are also impressed by the very fact that you were the first among the three parties of Whole Foods
Market, Gravestar, Inc., and Supervalue, Inc. to write this letter to the Wellesley community. We wish theexecutives at Gravestar and Supervalue had showed their willingness to talk to the Wellesley community
and to us directly. We have time and again expressed our interest to have a directly dialog with the
executive management at Gravestar and Supervalue during the past few months. We appreciate it that
you have finally responded and we are still waiting to hear from President of Gravestar and regional
President of Supervalue.
We were also quite encouraged by your statement Our genuine hope was that we could reach a
resolution that would allow us to begin the process of building our new store while assisting Li Zhen Yu
and Jian Chen in finding a location that would provide them many more years of success. As a small
family restaurant, we welcome your presence at Wellesley Plaza. We have been here for eighteen years
and had five ownership changes with the previous grocery stores that we subleased the space from. We
have always maintained a good relationship with these five owners and we can only hope we can continue
such a good relationship with Whole Foods. We need your support.
We have been told that there is no way that we can stay at our current location and nobody has bothered
to explain why. This is a big mystery for us and for the Wellesley community. We have been here for
eighteen years and have co-existed very well with the other five grocery store owners. Why cannot we
continue with Whole Foods? Additionally, nobody has explained to us why we cannot rent the empty
building in the same plaza, formerly occupied by Rite Aid. Perhaps you can help us understand.
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Wellesley community is like a family to us. We suffered as young kids growing up during the Cultural
Revolution in Shanghai, China, when our parents were shipped away to labor camps. We grew up like
orphans if not for the generosity of our family of friends and community in Shanghai. When we first
landed in the U.S., the Wellesley community took us in with open arms and made us feel like home. The
community has been very generous to us that we have made a happy living here for eighteen years
operating our restaurant. We have thousands of loyal customers. They are more than our customers.They are our friends and our family. We are very grateful that more than two thousands of them have
signed petitions for us to stay. We have tried, but cannot find suitable new locations in Wellesley. For us
to uproot and lose our family of friends in Wellesley is extremely difficult for us. We hope this helps you
understand why we want to stay and need to stay in Wellesley.
We would like to invite you, your family, and your management team to come and dine with us at Tian Fu
Restaurant. We will personally cook, and treat you to, an authentic home-made Shanghai cuisine. Lets
sit down and talk like fellow human beings. Lets put our differences aside for a day and try to understand
each other. We know that Whole Foods wants to grow and expand your business in Wellesley. We are
happy about it and support it. We want to continue with our restaurant in Wellesley, so that we can make
a living, pay our mortgages and our sons college tuition. Without this restaurant, our life will be
devastated. There has to be a way for us to work this out for the best of both of us.
We await anxiously your reply and look forward to meeting with you in person.
Best Regards,
Li Zhen (Lee) Yu
Jian An (John) Chen
CC:
John Mackey, CEO, Whole Foods Market
Walter Robb, Co-Chief Executive Officer
Dr. John B. Elstrott, Director, Board of Directors
Walter Robb, Director, Board of Directors
Gabrielle Greene, Director, Board of Directors
Hass Hassan, Director, Board of Directors
Stephanie Kugelman, Director, Board of Directors
Jonathan A. Seiffer, Director, Board of Directors
Morris Siegel, Director, Board of Directors
Jonathan D. Sokoloff, Director, Board of Directors
Dr. Ralph Z. Sorenson, Director, Board of Directors
William A. (Kip) Tindell, III, Director, Board of Directors
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