Jamie Nessel: Why the Whole Foods Vet Is Betting on Good Eggs

After 11 years leading grocery purchasing for 44 California Whole Foods, Jamie joined Good Eggs in January 2017 as our VP of Grocery. Since then, Good Eggs has launched Weeknight Dinner Kits , wine, and 100s of grocery staples (including TP!). I chatted with Jamie about perfect avocados, why she’s excited for Whole Foods, and how Good Eggs is reinventing grocery, for good.

Let’s start at the beginning. How’d you first get into the grocery world?

I dipped my toe in during college, when I worked in a member-supported co-op in Florida. I became a vegetarian when I was 12, and wanted to learn how to source the kinds of foods I wanted to eat. After graduation, I moved to California and fully committed to the food world. I began working at a local organic independent grocer and was introduced to a whole new world of fruits and vegetables. I realized I’d never tasted a perfectly ripe avocado. Before, I thought that “greens” meant solely spinach — then I met chard! and kale! and escarole! I’ve surrounded myself with California bounty ever since.

You came to Good Eggs to help us grow into a better everyday grocery store for our customers — how do you grow and stay true to your values?

My first job in grocery was at Good Earth, the pioneering California organic grocer. When I joined them in 1999, they were in a tiny 2,000 square foot space in Marin County. They had rigorous sourcing criteria and a highly curated assortment — born out of values, but reinforced by necessity — there just wasn’t enough shelf space! A year later, they moved to a store quadruple the size, and we began wrestling with questions like, “should we sell very popular sugar-enhanced canned tomatoes — even though we had previously steered clear of products with added sugar?”

Similarly at Good Eggs, there are popular products that don’t meet our sourcing criteria. LaCroix is a great example — people love it, so we really wanted to bring it into our marketplace, but they don’t meet Our Standards. Sure, adding LaCroix would be a short-term financial slam dunk, but in the long run, if we don’t stick to our values around sourcing, we lose our customers’ trust. There are other similar products that are made naturally by workers that we know are paid fairly. It’s our job, as grocers, to find those producers and introduce them to our community.

At Good Eggs, we’re reinventing our food system, for good. Why is this mission important to you?

Good Eggs is doing at scale what I have been doing personally for years. Before working here, I belonged to a CSA, joined the whole animal program at my local butcher, and ran around to a bunch of other small shops to get the rest of my groceries. Eating this way was a total pain in the butt and took over my weekends, but I wanted to support local food systems. Now, I order the same EatWell Farm CSA box, meat from local ranchers, California olive oil, fresh bread, and everything else I need on Good Eggs — and have it delivered to my doorstep whenever I want. It’s crazy — Good Eggs has made supporting local food systems easier than traditional grocery shopping. It’s pretty incredible.

At Whole Foods you managed dozens of people and almost 50 stores — what’s exciting about working with a smaller team here at Good Eggs?

Shortly after I started, Good Eggs kicked off a project in early 2017 to solve dinner. On April 16th, after less than three months, we launched the Good Eggs Dinner Kit. That kind of pace just can’t happen in larger, traditional operations. The entire team at Good Eggs rallied around crafting the kit — operationalizing new pick systems, designing custom packaging, developing recipes, and building prep kitchens. Everyone was pulling double (and triple!) duty. It’s a lot tougher to harness that energy and agility when you’re coordinating across 50 stores.

And it’s not just about the entrepreneurial rush — our speed allows us to respond in real time to customer needs. We heard from our customers again and again that getting a fresh, wholesome dinner on the table on any given Tuesday was next to impossible; after just a few months, we had a product that made it a whole lot easier. It’s gratifying to be able to respond to customer needs that quickly.

You joined Good Eggs to lead buying and merchandising — how do these efforts differ in an online marketplace versus a brick-and-mortar store?

Last week, Good Eggs launched wine — and we were able to merchandise it in ways that would have been totally unfeasible in a physical retail space. Brick-and-mortar stores must display their assortment according to a single organization principal — country of origin, grape varietal, etc. In a digital world, we use tags and filters to catalog our wines by many characteristics: taste, price, organic certification, no-sulfites, local, grape varietal. A customer can easily choose a no-sulfite, local Pinot Noir or a Spanish, organic Ananto — they can tailor their search to their precise needs. But that’s just the beginning, we can also suggest wines that complement the food you’re buying — like the best weeknight bottles to pair with your dinner kit or the best wine to mix with fruit for sangria.

Unlike a traditional grocer, like Whole Foods, Good Eggs is direct-to-consumer — why is this exciting?

After I started at Good Eggs, I reached out to our producer community to introduce myself and was blown away by how many eager responses I received. Humphrey Slocombe ice cream, Wise Sons, Mission Heirloom, Masumoto Farm, Ritual Coffee — they (not their reps!) got back to me. It was clear I had joined a food community, not just a company. It feels different than anything I’ve experienced in my many years in grocery — and is a real testament to the personal relationships the team here has developed over the years; these are real, supportive relationships, not just business transactions. It’s great, because these friendships mean that we can sell some pretty special stuff, like limited edition seasonal ice cream from Humphry Slocombe or first-of-the-season Masumoto peaches.

I have to ask…what do you think of your former employer’s big news? (For anyone who spent last week under a rock, Amazon announced it was acquiring Whole Foods.)

I’m so excited for them! And for us! Amazon will help Whole Foods build the technological infrastructure they’ve so desperately needed, and further centralize their buying practices — a project that was already in works before I left. This is another reason I am so excited to be at Good Eggs. Our direct-to-producer model allows us to work with small family farms, independent local producers and the bigger companies that we believe in, like Annie’s and Clif. As Whole Foods further consolidates, it will be very hard for them to work with the little guys.

Finally, what’s your favorite product sold on Good Eggs?

Are you kidding?! I’m a total food groupie and all my favorite producers sell on Good Eggs. Some people stand in line for concert tickets or the latest Apple device, I stand in line for food. I’m still amazed that I can get a Tartine country loaf or Fatted Calf bacon delivered straight to my house in Oakland without crossing the Bay Bridge — it’s just so cool.