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Amazon Says It Won't Replace Whole Foods Cashiers With Computers... Yet (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon said it has no current plans to automate the jobs of cashiers in Whole Foods stores after it finishes acquiring the grocery chain. It also isn't planning any layoffs, according to a spokesperson. There is some speculation, however, that Amazon may change its plans and use new technology inside of Whole Foods locations. Commenting on Amazon's announcement from earlier today, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said, "Only one company on earth can buy grocery chain, be rumored to buy enterprise software company & in both cases be lauded for strategic vision."
Every company that ever bought out another company always starts out with saying "Oh no worries we aren't going to change anything or lay anybody off!" and then six months or so later they do precisely that.
Whole Foods may be pricey (which is why I only buy a few things there I can't find anywhere else; who does all their shopping in one store?), but Amazon will be making a mistake if they turn it into Just Another Grocery Store. There are aspects to Whole Foods that distinguishes it from other grocery stores and if you take those things away then it just fades into the background noise.
"Only one company on earth can buy grocery chain, be rumored to buy enterprise software company & in both cases be lauded for strategic vision."
OK.
With a 15$/hour minimum wage, they will probably change their minds.
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
Perhaps Amazon might like to learn that.
But they won't. All they want to do is to put every other retailer out of business (like Wallyworld did once).
I prefer to shop locally these days.
Whole Foods is all hippy-dippy Earth loving stuff I thought. What would Amazon want with that? It's like Walmart buying out an Amish quilter and saying they have no plans for a factory. No duh! They can't go high-tech, it would defeat the purpose of why it was successful in the first place.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
If they'll eliminate it to save $15/hr, they'll eliminate it to save $5/hr
Keep begging your masters. Maybe if you agree to work for $2/hr (and say pretty please with a cherry on top) they'll keep you on.
Now about those tax cuts...
Whole Foods may be pricey...
Tofu. Their 14oz blocks are $1.99 where my Publix sells them at $2.99 (name brand).
Some wines are cheaper.
And I agree - Whole Paycheck for Whole Wheat Pastry flour. No one else in my area sells it.
BUT - My Publix and Kroger are catching on. And I was at a Food Lion the other day and they had a lot of good stuff too - their tofu was just as cheap.
The other stores are catching on and Whole Foods' niche is disappearing. And many things I just order from Amazon direct. Although, being near an Amazon distribution center and seeing orders being sat on because shipping at once would mean I get free two day shipping is annoying - like I used to 12 years ago. Yes, they do sit on orders if their algorithms show that you'd get "free" expedited shipping. I have a test case to prove it.
That's OK. I've figured out other ways to game their silly ass system and I'm keeping it ALL to myself. I'd sell it to Amazon, but they won't pay the the ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS for it.
Apple might.
well in some sates self checkout does not take wic / ebt
Echos are more productive, complain less, and don't show up to work with tattoos
Eat your broccoli.
President Bezos's secretary of Agriculture will mandate daily drone delivery of fresh broccoli to every American. Grandmas will be crushed under mountains of uneaten broccoli.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"Alexa, add Beyond Burgers to my Whole Foods pickup box. Alexa, add Fabainaise Classic 32 ounce to my Whole Foods pickup box. Alexa, add Field Roast Herb Chao slices to my Whole Foods pickup box. Alexa, schedule my Whole Foods pickup for Saturday morning."
That's because of the paperwork that was (maybe still is required) for WIC.
Noo..that's incorrect. WA state minimum wage is $11/hr (outside of Seattle) and prices are being continually raised, raises aren't being given to people making more than minimum, hours are being slashed left and right and guess what? No one in the counties want increased wages, it's only the liberals in bigger cities like Seattle (like as in like-minded). Nearing 7 months later, I've only seen small-medium sized businesses squirm. They can cut my wage back to $9/hr along with every other minimum wage job. $2/hr more at the cost of losing hours. I'm actually losing money bc of this minimum wage increase and I work at a medium-large business
Exactly the kind of psychopath I want involved in my food supply.
is being Seen there, just like some people want to be Seen in church. Amazon might mess with that aspect.
This is standard process for any acquisition:
Step 1: Assure all employees of both the acquired and the parent company that their job is safe.
Step 2: Assure the public that it is business as usual.
Step 3: https://hardware.slashdot.org/... all your employees in potentially redundant areas fill out "Skill matrix" or other bullshit evaluations
Step 4: Make a shocking, totally unexpected, totally unpredictable move to lay off redundancies to the point where you can't properly function
Step 5: Bring in inexpensive contractors/scabs to bring the business back up to minimal function as you ring money out of the asset at peak efficiency.
block customer from checking competitors' price online.
Please place the item into the bag.
Please place the item into the bag.
Please place the item into the bag, YOU HAVE 10 SECONDS TO COMPLY!
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
>>Buying groceries is one of the few things I prefer human interaction on.
Why? Human interaction on the grocery line?? My grandmother liked human interaction on the grocery line, but she was old and doddering, so we all kind of understood. My daughter was a cashier at a grocery store for one summer. People like you who try to strike up some human interaction scared the daylights out of her. I bought her a pepper spray canister, to keep in her apron. It made her feel safer.
And it can't check your ID for buying alcohol.
Nor can it help bag things for the old lady ahead of you.
Or correct prices that you think are wrong.
Or berate the people that bring a full cart into the "express" self checkout lane.
Self checkout is fine if you just ran in to grab milk or something where you don't even get a cart, but it should not be the poster child for replacing actual human employees.
If there are no cashiers don't shop there. Problem solved.
You can't eliminate a position to save $15/hr unless that position is useless and the person there is a welfare case. You have to replace the technology with less-expensive technology and reduce labor hours that way.
Let's say the total labor involvement to design, build, maintain, fuel, and operate a machine over its entire lifetime is equivalent to having $9/hr employees provide the replaced business activities. That is to say: the wage time invested, total, across that machine's entire existence, is equivalent to the wages of $9/hr employees producing the same things the machine does. In that case, replacing $15/hr employees with this saves you $6/hr per employee.
If your employees are $5/hr, it costs more to use the machine.
As technology improves over time, eventually you have those $9/hr employees making $11/hr, but the machine only costs $10.25/hr. At that point, it's cheaper but not necessarily strategic to replace the employees.
If you predict the technology will fall in price to $7/hr in the next three years and those machines have a 15-year ROI, you may find it most-profitable to keep your $11/hr employees for a few more years. Then you have $11.70/hr employees (2% per year raise), and a $7/hr machine. Now you start rolling out the machines. You've avoided being locked into a $10.25/hr TCO with only minimal opex.
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computer, yet.
at the very least their IT staff will get the axe as they merge their network with Amazon's. Accounting & HR will go next for the same reasons. That's just what you do when you merge. You remove redundancies.
Automation will come later, but it'll come. Probably not the checkout. If you're spending twice as much on groceries you're probably expecting somebody to check you out. Unless they implement some kind of grab and go system (or just close the storefronts entirely in favor of delivery).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I could sometimes stomach Whole Foods when they were their own entity, but I'm not interested in my grocery dollars going into Amazon's pocket. Even more so, I'll go out of my way to frequent local specialty markets. I imagine many Whole Foods shoppers being turned off by Amazon's involvement. If the demographics shift they will not be able to maintain the current standards.
I'm a little surprised investors seem to think this is such a great idea. It will be sad if they ruin a good business that a lot of people value.
I also find the self checkout useful if you're using multiple payment methods, for example if you're purchasing something for an elderly relative.
Obligatory South Park.
Woooo!
self check-out makes Harder To Prosecute Shoplifting even more so with some kind of no scan self checkout system.
Please place the item into the bag.
at the WF near me, you don't need to use a self checkout machine to get this interaction (minus the Robocop bit). There are signs up saying something about "don't make our employees put things in bags for you to save them from repetitive stress injuries". And the employees give you the evil eye if you don't Comply Immediately With the Sign. So, you get to pay more for your food while getting less service.
So this will be the Whole of Amazon?
The CEO of Whole Foods is pretty conservative/libertarian. If you assume Whole Foods customers are tree hugging greenies who have Greenpeace stickers on their Volvos and aspire to join a commune, they don't seem to mind. They might welcome that their market is being bought by the same guy who owns WaPo, which has all those journalists and editors going after Trump. Of course, those local specialty markets have largely been run out of town by Whole Foods or Amazon already. Unless, of course, they were an upmarket grocery chain that was already bought by Whole Foods years ago. Sources: John Mackey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Jeff Bezos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
computer, yet.
They're called MacBooks.
If anything you'll be seen more, after Amazon installs more surveillance to datamine shoppers.
Not to mention the automatic updates of your visits they'll post to your social media after hijacking your in-store internet traffic.
well in some sates self checkout does not take wic / ebt
Not really a problem, as few wic/ebt eligible customers go to Whole Paycheck for their asparagus water.
white kids with dreadlocks.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Have gnu, will travel.
Mostly, Whole Foods shoppers are worried about things like celiac disease (that they don't have). Also, as many Greenpeace Vegans they have, there are just as many Trumpkin Paleo guys.
Is someone willing to speculate as to what kinds of cool stuff you do with control of both Amazon + Whole Foods?
At least they run UNIX.
This is not about what Whole Foods sells, or whether Amazon wants to automate it. It's about Walmart. Amazon is feeling the heat from Walmart, who has gone into online sales and recently doing a decent job of challenging Amazon. Walmart has a million stores that can be used to ship to for free, or to process returns for free. Amazon needs to make Walmart feel some pain. Walmart went into the grocery business a few years back, and is killing older grocery chains. That is a good pressure point to give Walmart some pain. WF was probably the only grocery chain that could be got for "reasonable" cash that didn't seem like just a dump. It's usually easier to start with the boutique end of some business, because the customers are not much sensitive to price.
Two weeks before Microsoft closed its takeover of Nokia Mobile Phones where I worked at the time, they assured all the employees that there would be no layoffs and everyone had a secure position. Two weeks after the takeover was complete, they laid off 20,000 of us... Our entire division was decimated and basically shut down. I wonder what happened to the 100 million customers we were serving?
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
You've apparently never heard of Amazon Go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrmMk1Myrxc
Valid point, ignorance is bliss.