Whole Foods scorned for giving free food to National Guard in Baltimore
One store posted then deleted an Instagram photo of soldiers with a bag of food. Twitter users asked why it wasn’t feeding school kids instead, though Whole Foods was doing that, too.
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Brand managers at Whole Foods discovered Tuesday that offering help in the midst of a crisis can look like taking sides.
When the chain’s Harbor East store in Baltimore posted a photo of National Guard soldiers holding a bag of free sandwiches, quite a few people took that as Whole Foods’ taking a stance against the protesters.
A photo posted by Cherrell Brown (@awkward_duck) on
Some protests sparked by the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old man who died of a spinal injury while in police custody, turned into riots in Baltimore Monday.
The Whole Foods store deleted the Instagram post, but not before responses such as these started popping up:
I preferred shopping at @WholeFoods but after seeing them supporting the Nat’l Guard & not uplifting the Baltimore community.. No more.
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