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.
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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