Whole Foods CEOs admit NYC stores jacked up prices: "Straight up, we made some mistakes"

Whole Foods CEOs John Mackey and Walter Robb admitted in a YouTube video on Wednesday that the unfair pricing the company so vehemently denied last week definitely did happen.

“We want to talk directly with you this morning about certain pricing issues you may have heard about in our New York City stores,” said Robb. Adding, “Straight up, we made some mistakes. We want to own that and tell you what we’re doing about it.”

The CEOs continued by explaining the error. Mackey said, “These mistakes have to do with the things that we do in the store with mostly our fresh product. Whether we’re making sandwiches or we’re squeezing fresh juices or having cut fruit. In these areas there’s a very, very small percentage that they’re misweighing errors.”

Robb tacked a small-non apology to Mackey’s statement, saying, “And we know they’re unintentional because the mistakes were both in the customers’ favor, and sometimes not in the customers’ favor. It’s understandable sometimes that mistakes are made. They’re inadvertent, they do happen, because it’s a hands-on approach to bringing you the fresh food.”

For comparison, this is how the company described the accusations last week: “We disagree with the [Department of Consumer Affair’s] overreaching allegations and we are vigorously defending ourselves.”

To remedy these mistakes, the co-executives promise to increase training in New York stores and throughout the country. They’re also bring in a third-party auditor to make sure the situation improves, and promise to check back in a month and a half from now to keep us posted on progress. They also encourage customers who think there’s a mistake to bring it up to Whole Foods cashiers. If there’s a pricing error not in the customers’ favor, they’ll receive the item for free.