Why Whole Foods Employees Are Dreading The Return Of A Fan-Favorite Pizza Deal

Last week news began to circulate on Reddit that the Whole Foods Pizza Fridays promotion would return and was met with extreme negativity. "Everyone else that works Pizza with me has said that they'd quit if they ever brought it back because the customers get incredibly abusive if they have to wait more than 5 minutes for a pie," the self-identified employee added after asking if anyone else could confirm the news.

"Oh God," one commenter groaned, "not the $6 cheese pizzas again. I'm getting flashbacks." They would probably not be pleased to know that Whole Foods won't offer $6 cheese pizzas again because they're now charging $8. As explained on the Whole Foods website, Amazon Prime members can get a whole cheese pizza from Whole Foods on Fridays for $8. "Yeah it's bad," a second worker attested. "I was hired when the deal started and 5 people on pizza quit because of it, so I was put on every weekend for 6 months straight and it was terrible."

A couple of days later, another worker shared a picture of the promotion's sign. "It IS Happening," they stated. "Yesterday when I found out about this sale, I wanted to cry," one worker shared. So, while Amazon Prime members may feel various levels of excitement over the news, the workers at Whole Foods who will have to meet the demand for cheap pizza and deal with impatient customers seem to dread it.

While aggressive customers certainly don't help the situation, the biggest theme of the complaints about Pizza Fridays is that the Prepared Foods Department is understaffed. "Most PFDS teams are super understaffed," one complaint noted. "We are being told at the store leadership level we need to have that team do pre pandemic numbers even with minimal staffing and then this is the icing on the cake."

In fact, a separate yet simultaneous discussion occurred on Reddit about the state of the Prepared Foods Department across various Whole Foods stores. The common story was that the stations would have a few people in the morning, have no one for the middle part of the day, and have one person to close. One story focused on their experience with pizza, specifically how after moving team members from that section, the store has struggled to hire replacements. "Been the only pizza person for the last year they expect too much. The only two people they've hired to pizza have left in under a month it's a joke," the Redditor wrote. The despair of the pizza promotion's return may have less to do with the specific promotion than more to do with the stress of working in the Prepared Foods Department at the grocery chain.