Whole Foods Market CEO Walter Robb speaks at the Mackinac Policy Conference on Wednesday, May 27, 2015.

MACKINAC ISLAND, MI -- The opening of a Whole Foods Market in Detroit nearly two years ago changed the way the health food chain views business, said CEO Walter Robb at the Mackinac Policy Conference on Wednesday.

He described the June 5, 2013 grand opening in Midtown as "one of the greatest days of my life."

A second Detroit store is in the works, along with an East Lansing location set to open in mid-2017, Robb said.

"This was a project the Wall Street Journal said was a business plan gone off the rails, and nobody said it could be done," he said. "When people say stuff can't be done, they're wrong. They can. You just have to believe."

It wasn't the better-than-expected sales at the Detroit store that left such an impact.

"We're so far exceeding our expectations with respect to sales, I don't even know what to say about it," Robb said.

It was something else:

"We started out with community activist groups having the idea that Whole Foods had nothing to do with the community and that it wasn't going to contribute," Robb said. "By really engaging and trying to listen and by starting from a place of really respecting the community and listening to where they were and what they were doing -- these are no food deserts.

"These are places where lots is going on, and your job as a company is to come in and be part of that and participate. And this led to us really overhauling our core value as a company, serving and supporting our local and global communities as a result of re-imagining what's possible between a company and a community when dialogue happens."

He highlighted local supplier relations that support small businesses in the city, regularly packed cooking classes at the Mack Avenue store and the fact that 75 percent of the 90 people hired when opened still work at the store.

"This idea of putting the community first is really at the heart of the store's efforts," Robb said.

"... There's tremendous disparity in food access in this country. There's over 6,500 areas that don't have access to fresh, healthy food like most of you enjoy in your lives. And in the city of Detroit, the health outcomes, the life expectancy in Detroit is some 10 years less than in Oakland County... That is a moral dilemma. That is a moral challenge. That is a moral problem that business needs to do something about."

Aside from the human element Robb celebrated, business for health food companies isn't bad, either.

"Market forces are moving in this direction," said Garden Fresh Gourmet Vice Chairman Dave Zilko, who joined Robb in a panel on sustainable food economy at the conference

Citing rising interest dietary health and food sourcing for the growth, Zilko said the Ferndale-based business started in 1998 with an artichoke-themed concoction in bucket and a loan from a girlfriend and has grown into the largest fresh salsa brand in North America.

"I love how sustainable the food economy is and how important it can be to communities," he said.

"I don't see this trend reversing itself."