It's been 25 years since the Memorial Day flood killed 13 people and did $36 million in damage. Whole Foods was in its infancy at the time. The flood destroyed the flagship store and proved to be a make or break moment for the company.
Cheapo Discs now sits at 10th and Lamar, but in 1981 the building housed the original Whole Foods. It began as just one little natural and organic food store in Austin in 1980.
Dave Matthis was then the store manager. Now, more than 25 years later, Matthis still works as an IT manager for the company’s 184 stores.
Matthis was at home with his wife, friends and founder-turned-CEO John Mackey when the weather turned bad that night in 1981. They were playing board games until calls began to come in from the store. At first, they weren't worried.
"Then, they called a little while later and said, ‘Well, the water is into the store and we're leaving.’ At that point we thought maybe there was going to be some trouble," Matthis said.
Despite warnings not to go out into the storm, Matthis and Mackey made their way to the store. When they got there, the water had been as high as seven feet. Produce and sundries bobbed along in what was once a store.
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Rising above
The Memorial Day Flood of 1981 proved to be a make or break moment for Whole Foods Market.
 
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"Bottles of wine and bottles of oil don't float. So they stayed on the shelves but oranges and vitamin bottles do float, so they went to the top of the water and covered the top of the water. Then as the water went down it deposited those things wherever they happened to be," Matthis said.
Two employees almost died the night of the flood at whole foods. They were trapped in an office with water so high the door wouldn't open. Other employees on the outside had to help get them out.
The damage was assessed the next day. The store was an extensive mess of mud and bottles, produce and rotting meat. And then there was that issue of flood insurance that brought so much uncertainty.
"After a day or two it became clear that we did not have flood insurance. We didn't really know what was going to happen," Matthis said.
Would they give up or go forward? Would they get the funding needed to re-open the store? The answer came three days after the flood in a meeting with store employees.
"At that moment we all went out in front of the store, we had 60 or 80 people, and took a picture in front of the store which is the flood picture. And everybody was so happy in that picture if you look at it, everyone is smiling, they have great facial expressions and everybody's dirty and muddy and smiling and happy because we were going to be able to move forward,” Matthis said.
Twenty-eight days after the flood, Whole Foods reopened. The flood became the ultimate team-building experience. It was a moment captured in a photo, a moment that made a company. Faces from the flood photo are still inspiring today. Faces like Margaret Wittenberg, the current VP of Quality Standards. Faces like then-eight-year-old Nathan Perry who works today in the Whole Foods home office. Faces like Dave Matthis.
