1992: From Austin to Wall Street

Now operating 12 stores in Texas, California, North Carolina and Louisiana, Whole Foods Market went public. The prospectus stated that a significant segment of the population now attributes added value to high quality natural food.

Marian Burros, a food reporter for The New York Times, wrote that these gleaming new supermarkets 13,000 to 27,000 square feet of floor space bear about as much resemblance to the grungy, 1960s fern-bedecked natural food co-op, with its shriveled produce and flour stored in trash cans, as McDonalds does to Lutce.

Later that year, the company expanded into the Northeast with the purchase of the Boston-based supermarket chain Bread and Circus.

1996: From Hippie to Hip Capitalist

Whole Foods acquired Fresh Fields, a Maryland-based chain with 22 stores. Mr. Mackeys natural foods empire now consisted of 70 stores in 16 states. While still small compared to traditional supermarket chains, the natural and organic foods company grew at more than 20 percent a year. The next year, revenue surpassed $1 billion.

1997: Whole Foods, Whole Paycheck

Whole Foods started its store brand, 365 Everyday Value. The private label was later used to combat the perception that Whole Foods, sometimes known as Whole Paycheck for its notoriously high prices, was too expensive for everyday people.

2002: Fighting Unions

Mr. Mackey says he is pro-employee, but anti-union. In Madison, Wis., workers voted to unionize, a victory that was later decertified. Mr. Mackey told The Times that the vote came from his inattention to worker concerns. The following year, he visited all the Whole Foods stores in the United States to bond with employees.

2004: Manhattans Largest Supermarket

Whole Foods, which already operated a 40,000-square-foot store in Chelsea, opened its flagship 58,000-square-foot store in the basement of the Time Warner Center. On opening day, a line stretched out the door.

2006: Wall Street and Foodies Grow Disillusioned

Critics began to complain that Whole Foods was straying from its roots. The newer stores focus on prepared food and include in-store restaurants and spas. Bruised by competition with traditional grocery stores, the stock dropped by nearly 40 percent.

2007: An Ill-Fated Merger

The Federal Trade Commission challenged the acquisition of Wild Oats, claiming that the deal would create a natural-foods monopoly. The F.T.C. discovered that Mr. Mackey had used a pseudonym to write anonymous blog posts attacking Wild Oats. The end game is now under way for OATS, Mr. Mackey wrote in one. Whole Foods is systematically destroying their viability as a business market by market, city by city. Two years later, Whole Foods agreed to sell 13 stores to resolve the complaint.

2008: Selling a Stake to a Private Investor

Squeezed by the financial crisis and traditional grocery stores, Whole Foods stock plummeted 76 percent in one year. The company sold a 17 percent stake to Green Equity Investors, an affiliate of Los Angeles-based private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners.

2009: Obamacare and a Boycott

Mr. Mackey wrote an Op-Ed in The Wall Street Journal quoting Margaret Thatcher and arguing that the last thing our country needs is a massive new health care entitlement. His companys liberal-minded customers responded with a boycott.

2013: The G.M.O. Label

Whole Foods became the first retailer in the United States to label all genetically modified foods. The companys stock peaked at $65.24.

2015: Wall Street Sours

Wall Street analysts grew increasingly negative as organic food became cheaper and more popular at big supermarket chains.

Conventional retailers can get it into their stores more cheaply, and they can be more predatory on pricing, Mark Retzloff, a pioneer of the natural and organic foods retail business, told The Times. If one of those stores is just down the street from a Whole Foods, theres a big segment of their customer base that isnt going to shop at Whole Foods anymore.

2017: Under Hedge Fund Duress

After the activist hedge fund Jana Partners took a stake in Whole Foods and pushed for change, the company overhauled its board in May and began a push to cut costs. Gabrielle Sulzberger, a private equity executive who is married to Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the chairman and publisher of The New York Times, became chairwoman.

In an interview with Texas Monthly published on June 14, Mr. Mackey criticized activist investors. Its the idea that business is about a bunch of greedy bastards running around exploiting people, screwing their customers, taking advantage of their employees, dumping their toxic waste in the environment, acting like sociopaths, he said.

Two days later, Amazon agreed to buy Whole Foods for $13.4 billion.

A version of this article appears in print on June 17, 2017, on Page B5 of the New York edition with the headline: The Life of an Organic Giant.

Read more:

How Whole Foods Became the Organic Giant - The New York Times - New York Times