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Amazon Plans Cuts to Shed Whole Foods' Pricey Image (bloomberg.com)
When Amazon completes its acquisition of Whole Foods Market, Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos will try to keep the grocer's reputation for premium fresh foods while cutting prices to shed its "Whole Paycheck" image. From a report: Amazon expects to reduce headcount and change inventory to lower prices and make Whole Foods competitive with Wal-Mart Stores and other big-box retailers, according to a person with knowledge of the company's grocery plans. That included potentially using technology to eliminate cashiers. Amazon, known for its competitive prices, is trying to attract more low- and middle-income shoppers with its grocery push. The Seattle-based company already offers discounted Amazon Prime memberships for people receiving government assistance and is part of a pilot program to deliver groceries to food-stamp recipients.
There's always TJs
Why am I not surprised the first action upon acquiring a new company is to fire everybody who might know how to run it?
People go to Whole Foods to GET AWAY from lower class people. If I want cheap prices, I'll go to Walmart and deal with the trash that shops there.
Lowering the prices too much will turn Whole Foods into trash. What Amazon needs to be doing instead is leveraging Whole Foods name for home grocery delivery and lowering the prices if you choose that option.
I would venture that a big percentage of WF clientele shop there *because* of its high-price reputation. There are studies showing that people feel like they're getting a better quality product when they pay more for something, and that is almost certainly a big part of why people shop at WF. I suspect that trying to compete with Walmart is going to destroy the chain.
the quality will drop and Amazon will try to milk the image as long as they can before people realize it ain't any better than wallymart.
just like on amazon.com, amazon should now allow local sellers to come and sell at Whole Foods stores! this may lead to competitive pricing and benefit whole food's reputation & business, farmers and consumers alike.
People who shop at Whole Foods do not want to rub shopping carts with the dirty people from Walmart.
They want to turn Whole Foods into Wegmans?
I'm... actually okay with that.
Carry on.
is so I don't have to deal with Walmart customers. Eleventy billion fucking kids running around, white trash screaming at each other, etc.
At least with Whole Foods, we get a whole different level of douchebag, but they're not likely to be carrying guns or knives and anxious to prove how badass they are.
I just want my fucking couscous, you stupid cunt. Get the fuck out of my way.
I expect the first thing Amazon will change is the back-end distribution system. This is something Amazon knows better than pretty much anyone else, especially for non-perishables, which is probably more than half the store.
To "No Paycheck" for many employees.
Super cheap but fake zucchini coming to a store near you!
The Seattle-based company already offers discounted Amazon Prime memberships for people receiving government assistance and is part of a pilot program to deliver groceries to food-stamp recipients.
Thereby making a hard life easier, and making things more equal.
Whole Foods is still way cheaper than buying groceries in Canada, and you guys are complaining about the price?
No. When I go to a physical establishment, I expect that experience to include one interaction with an employee. Self-checkout is the wrong solution to a problem retailers created: not having enough checkouts open. If you want me to do use self-checkout, thereby doing an employee's job, I want an employee discount. Stop pushing this on customers as if it's some miraculous reverse-ATM.
The article is click bait. As stated in the article, Amazon has not confirmed ANY of the assertions made in the article.
As I recall, Bezos is pumping money back in to acquisitions and expanding the company and pumping the stock price, but are the actually profitable yet? I don't know that lowering prices (substantially) at WF is the move to make, but what do I know. The nearest WF is hundreds of miles away, so it's rare that I get to shop there.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
will never make sense anymore. At least we can have comfort in knowing those in SanFran (sick) still love to smell their own farts.
People that shop at Whole Foods are not price conscious, it is premium retailer aimed at well-off crowd. This group doesn't intersect with WallMart shoppers, so why then would you want to compete with WallMart on price?
What I find surprising is that Amazon got Whole Foods for the low low price of $13.7 billion, the same price as a 1 lb bag of organic quinoa.
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If I wanted another Wal-Mart, I would have just fucking gone to Wal-Mart.
I go to Wholefoods because it is different. And I will stop going as soon as it is just another place selling cheap trash and exploiting its employees.
'stuff that really matters' lowgo in the toilet as different interpretations of our circumstances prevail.. cease fire stand down.. sing along https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKvnQYFhGCc .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w211KOQ5BMI if it were easy everyone would do it?
Why am I not surprised the first action upon acquiring a new company is to fire everybody who might know how to run it?
Whole Foods has been in considerable trouble recently so it's pretty clear the folks in charge of Whole foods did not know how to run it. The company found an untapped niche where they were a first mover. The competition has significantly caught up and so it's harder to get away with charging for $6 "asparagus water".
And yes there will be headcount cuts, at least at first. Almost any time two companies merge there are some redundant positions. Furthermore Whole Foods has a cost structure that is not working in the face of increased competition. Part of this means they probably have more people employed than they can really justify. They can change or they can die. There is no option three.
Walmart knows back-ends too, and has been at it longer.
Yeh, this is really sad - WholeFoods for all that it is pricy as hell also sells a bunch of really good quality things that you can't easily get elsewhere. Turning it into yet another Safeway is a real shame.
You do realize Whole Foods started in Texas
Austin Texas. A small bubble of something close to sanity surrounded by the rest of the lunacy that is Texas. Austin isn't much like the rest of the state. They call it weird but it's only really weird if you compare it to the rest of Texas. For people like me who visit Austin regularly but don't live in Texas, it isn't weird at all.
...and the supermarket business just shit themselves.
So which will blink first:
- will the giant megacorp which seems to run magically profit-free manage to outcompete everyone in an industry where margins are already nearly zero?
- or will the high-capital, high-labor, complex grocery business finally be the anchor that drags amazon to a stop? Certainly Amazon's approach has revolutionized the sale of general consumer products but entering the world of products whose value ticks away (quickly) with the clock is another kettle of fish.
Grocery chains have already seemingly wrung every penny of value out of their supply chains...what can Amazon really bring that's better aside from a marquee name and investors that are cheerfully willing to pour $ into a loser business as long as it's enormous?
I'd guess Whole Foods niche will be almost immediately supplanted by another competitor that is willing to serve the smarmy, snobby, boutique wealthy faux-'concerned' customer seeking their organic cruelty-free free-range quinoa for double the price.
-Styopa
Trader Joe's is substantially cheaper than Whole Foods right now. Cutting prices wouldn't be terrible, but it will likely come along with changing their inventory from the unique (and expensive) items which they have currently, to the staple brands that you can get at any grocery store. As you say: there's no need for another Safeway. (Or Kroger, or whatever. I've never been to a Safeway.)
The only way to keep Amazon's stock price growing at its current pace is to keep growing its market share and convince Wall Street that the company will continue to grow aggressively.
Whole Foods year over year sales have really been dropping and as a result they have been getting hounded in the business press. To the point where the CEO was, or should have been, sweating bullets about whether he'd keep his job.
So Amazon is going to give Whole Foods the "course correction" that Wall Street has been baying for and part of that means leveraging Amazon's giant purchasing power to squeeze lower prices out of suppliers. If Bezos can pull it off and make Whole Foods a slightly better Wallmart then the deal really will be worth what yesterday's stock market reaction said it is.
This group doesn't intersect with WallMart shoppers, so why then would you want to compete with WallMart on price?
Because if Walmart offers good enough organic produce, price will win out. There seemingly are not enough Whole Foods customers who aren't willing to go elsewhere for their organic kale to keep the company afloat when they can get it from Costco or Kroger or yes even Walmart. Whole Foods had a niche when they were effectively the only ones selling organic foods. Now I can get that from nearly anywhere, often for a lot less money.
Amazon bought a company and are now trying to completely change that company's branding. This does not smell like a success story.
Finding God in a Dog
For the death of the middle class. Hear me out on this one. As Whole Foods and other over priced chains are a good indicator of a shrinking middle class. Middle Class people want to feel upscale and are willing to pay for it. They don't make enough money to source their own food stuffs like a billionaire or even a multi millionaire might, but they make enough to eat Organic (which is a fancy way of saying no pesticides in your food and no BHT in your packaging).
As these ever so slightly upscale places go tits up we're seeing the middle class go with them. There's just not enough people making good money to support them. This isn't the company being mismanaged, it's the change in 'change or die'. It just so happens that change is the American Middle Class is going away.
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... from all of the outrage on these posts.
Yeh, this is really sad - WholeFoods for all that it is pricy as hell also sells a bunch of really good quality things that you can't easily get elsewhere. Turning it into yet another Safeway is a real shame.
I agree, but Amazon is a logistics company masquerading as a retail operations; similar to Walmart in terms of focus although not quite as cutthroat from what I've seen. If Amazon can maintain quality while reducing supply chain costs and expanding the customer base to get greater economies of scale tehy could turn Whole Foods into a serious competitor.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
News flash: Whole Foods exists outside of Silicon Valley, as it is a national chain...
Why didn't Amazon buy Kroger? They have much larger market penetration. Amazon is sitting nearly unlimited cash. Whole Foods is a place where upper-middle-class people can waste their money on goods that may, or may not, be worth the cost. I watched South Park and I have shopped at Wholefoods. They portrayed Wholefoods exactly as it is. Overpriced, agenda driven and snooty.
Not cheaper than Trader Joe's but Lidl, Aldi and Netto.
This will be taught on MBA courses in the future. 'How to destroy a business in one easy lesson'.
My limited experience of WF left me with the impression that the staff cared about their job and the things they sold. I guess Amazon does not get that.
anyway, I'm not buying stuff from Amazon any more unless there is no alternative. I prefer to use local small businesses.
Posh people won't like it ;-)
It does seem a bit odd.
You buy a store with a strong established brand image as a premium store and plan to totally reinvent the brand as a bargain low cost store.
They're losing a large chunk of the value of their acquisition. If they want a low-cost brand they might have been better served purchasing a low-cost chain that already had that brand established.
They're going to piss off their existing clientele and probably be shunned by their intended market because they have the exact opposite brand image currently.
I always bypass Whole Foods because they are expensive. That's what their brand means to me. That's where rich people shop. Amazon may plan to cheapen them, and may succeed, but I won't know because I'll be busy going to my average-person grocery store and avoiding Whole Foods.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
No, what the article says is they're going to focus on their "store brand" offerings - which is not necessarily a terrible thing. The ingredients are typically the same, and indeed, often the product is exactly the same, it's just not sold with a fancy brand-name label on it. You'll still be able to get your small-batch artisanal avocado toast niblets with grass fed free range salmon bites, they just won't be "SMEGLEY'S BRAND SMALL BATCH ARTISANAL AVOCADO TOAST NIBLETS WITH GRASS FED FREE RANGE SALMON BITES."
News flash: Whole Foods didn't even start in California, it started in Austin.
You know that Whole Foods (and the world at large) exists outside Silicon Valley, right?
Pull your head out of your ass.
Yeh, this is really sad - WholeFoods for all that it is pricy as hell also sells a bunch of really good quality things that you can't easily get elsewhere.
That's just not true anymore. I have a half dozen grocery stores within 30 miles of my house that are every bit as good (sometimes better) than Whole Foods and serve price points similar to Whole Foods. And frankly there is rarely anything I would ever buy that I can only get at Whole Foods. Decent quality organic produce and meats? Available at several premium grocery stores near me and sometimes even at my local Kroger. Sustainable fish? I've got a fish monger that is WAY better than Whole Foods plus the same premium grocery stores. Prepared foods? Same deal. Deli? I've got one of the best in the country near me which Whole Foods can't even touch. Weird grains? Got 'em. Pricey lotions? Countless options. Bogus homeopathic "remedies"? Widely available from a scam artist near you.
Whole Foods does sell good stuff for the most part but they are hardly the only game in to in the places where their stores are located most of the time. Seriously, what do you think you can get at Whole Foods that isn't available elsewhere?
Turning it into yet another Safeway is a real shame.
Why do you assume it will become a Safeway? Amazon could do a lot to cut costs and prices without turning it into a crappy shopping experience.
If this story is accurate, then they'll be making a big mistake: Whole Foods will fade into the background noise of every other grocery store and become irrelevant. The whole point of Whole Foods is there's things you can't find anywhere else. You eliminate those things and it's Just Another Grocery Store; at that point it may as well have been turned into a Winco (which I'm not saying to bash Winco, I buy basic stuff there, but there are things I must have for health reasons I can only find at Whole Foods or similar).
You know that Whole Foods (and the world at large) exists outside Silicon Valley, right?
I didn't think that the Matrix was that large.
WalMart tends to buy at the low end of the quality spectrum, mainly to keep prices down; at least that was the case a few years back when I talked to one of their suppliers who sold to most other grocery chains as well. There is nothing wrong with their food, just a lot of it is a cut below a major grocery chain's quality; that lets them keep prices low. The only exception I've seen is the vegetables which tend to be perfectly fine; the meats and fish OTOH are often barely edible in comparison.
I don't disagree but remember that Walmart doesn't have to capture all of Whole Foods customers to drive them out of business. They just need to get enough to push them into unprofitability like they've done with so many other retailers. The problem Whole Foods is facing is simply increased competition and they don't have the cost structure right now to deal with the threat adequately. Most people simply aren't that loyal to Whole Foods especially since they no longer have a niche all to themselves.
Never been to a whole foods, none in my area, but it sounds like Amazon will do the race to the bottom to compete with other large chain grocery stores.
Whole foods was already doing shady stuff before the acquisition like frozen organic vegetables irrigated with chinese industrial river water.
They bought them, not to keep the brand alive, but to get into the grocery store market. You can bet they will cut & chop, to knock the price down.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Thanks. It sounded like Fresh and Easy all over again, which had to have been the dumbest grocery venture in decades. (Not only was it wired, but they tried to compete head-to-head with Trader Joe's with many stores less than a quarter mile apart!)
The funny thing is that when I go to Whole Foods, it's because I'm looking for foodstuffs that are exotic and generally unavailable anywhere else. I don't go to them for mainstream food, that's what the local Kroger-owned grocery is for, or on rare occasions Safeway/Albertsons or even the locally-owned grocery chain.
I treat Whole Foods much the same way that I treat Trader Joes, which is for exotic stuff to supplement my main groceries. I have no need for another mainstream grocery store, I already have at least three to choose from, and I have plenty of discount grocery stores to choose from too. One more player is exceedingly unlikely to beat Kroger's prices in order to take my business, especially when the nearest three grocery stores are those Kroger-owned stores.
Amazon's change here is as mistake. It's a race to the bottom in a new market for them, a market that has lots of very well established players that know how to make money with the tiniest of overhead, where these players have dozens or even hundreds of stores for every Whole Foods location. Plus we've already seen the failures before, Fresh and Easy attempted to come in and slot themselves as an alternative to the grocery stores with prices somewhat close to groceries plus more convenience and they fell on their faces and closed-up. I don't see Amazon having any more success than that given that Amazon's model doesn't really apply well to either brick-and-mortar stores or to fresh food.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If Amazon can maintain quality while reducing supply chain costs and expanding the customer base to get greater economies of scale tehy could turn Whole Foods into a serious competitor.
If it was a privately held company with a, "Quality is Job #1" slogan they actually believe in, that could happen.
In this case, however - where this was an investment opportunity/buyout by a large investor - I wouldn't hold your breath. Modern, large-scale business theory has a relatively new corollary they believe in: "Good Enough" trumps "Best" to most consumers. In several years, when Amazon's profits growth matures (and it always does), and stockholders start looking for new ways to keep stock prices going up (they always do), quality will be the first thing to go after they fire any remaining, expendable human workers.
I despise self-checkout. Amazon basically ensured I'll be avoiding Whole Foods from now on. That, and the cheapening of the inventory is creating a business opportunity for the kind of company that Whole Foods used to be, correcting the mistakes that Whole Foods made along the way.
I propose Bellerophon Foods.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Just uninformed musing here.
For hire.
So exactly how will those laid off with no income be able to purchase these lower priced goods?
Universal basic income.
I'm all for automation because I think it can move society forward in ways we haven't imagined before. But I'm not all for 100% of the profits of automation going to the 1%.
It takes up more land for farming.
It requires more water and enwrgy per yield.
It causes food and adequate nutrition to be more expensive for poor people.
Making it cheaper doesn't necessarily have to decrease quality. Whole Foods is heavily invested in the organic, non-GMO nonsense, which raises costs at negligible benefit. I'd love to see them switch their focus to quality exclusively, and and drop the catering to scientific illiteracy. Might be able to lower costs and increase quality that way if they act more like Wegmans.
Whole Foods was known for three things:
1) You get the same brands as you do at other stores, but you pay a lot more for them.
2) An ok but not great selection of produce.
3) There's a lot of woo here, like organic free-range flaxseed oil and "all-natural" dietary supplements of dubious quality that sound like snake oil for the gullible.
I always assumed the high prices were to support #3 (other stores can even do "organic" at a much lower price) but maybe Amazon can find real spots in the company where inefficiencies can be identified and waste eliminated.
My grocery store doesn't have self-checkout. A number of years ago one of the stores tried it. The machines didn't work right. Apparently it wasn't just me, because they quit offering it and none of the other stores around here tried it.
This was years ago, so maybe the tech wasn't ready, or maybe they just tried to cheap out and got crappy machines. Either way, it left a bad impression on me, and I'm not eager to try it again.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Horrible article - its just guessing with no facts The article is click bait. As stated in the article, Amazon has not confirmed ANY of the assertions made in the article.
Or in other words: modern journalism.
If there are not enough news to keep churning out articles, you just have to make something up.
Yes, and low income people can already get fresh produce at wal mart for cheap or produce stands if you have them. Cutting whole foods down in price isnt about cheap foods for the poor. Its only going to hurt employees. Its about getting rid of cashiers. If a premium foods store doesnt have cashiers, how can wal mart justify them? Thats why Bezos bought a premium food store rather than a budget one, by chopping people out of a premium store it will have an impact on all of retail below it.
The usual plan is to buy a brand with a good reputation, and start selling cheap-as-possible crap instead of what the brand used to sell, milking the reputation and customer inertia for years. Good money to be made, for those with no soul. But you don't announce you're doing that! So I can't even guess what Amazon is thinking here.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I also question the usefulness of a store that doesn't sell essentials like asprin. I can get decent quality steak at Publix, and I can get asprin there too. I might be able to get a better steak from Whole Foods but I suspect I probably wouldn't taste the difference, and after viewing the receipt, I'd have a headache and no asprin to fix it.
There is no doubt that a typical steak from Whole Foods will likely be better than one from Publix and the price will also be substantially higher most likely as well to reflect that fact. That doesn't mean the one from Publix is bad though and if you aren't a particularly good cook then the better cut of meat could easily be ruined in which case why bother buying the expensive cut?
What irritates me about whole foods is that they go to all the bother to sell expensive healthy organic produce and then they sell fraudulent homeopathic "cures" instead of real medications. To me it shows they really aren't a very honest company given they are pedaling snake oil like that. They're basically catering to idiot hippies with more money than brains.
Now, sure, I can go to two supermarkets. I can also not, and use the extra half hour to an hour it would take to drive to the next one, park, go in, find what I'm looking for, go to the checkout, buy it, walk back to the car, and drive home, to read another chapter of a book, or watch TV.
I wouldn't disparage you for doing so. I shop a lot online these days for exactly that reason. Why spend a hour running from store to store if you don't have to?
No, I'm not going to another store, be it another supermarket or a pharmacy, to buy asprin. No other supermarket on the planet refuses to sell basics like that. And while, yeah, I'm sure the steak is noticeably worse at Winn Dixie, but Publix manages to sell quality food and everything else you'd expect to find at a supermarket.
There is a difference between a grocery store and a supermarket. Supermarkets tend to have a wider variety of products beyond just food whereas a grocery store tends to focus mostly on food. Whole Foods is a grocery store, not a supermarket. They sell some stuff other than food but it's clear food is their focus.
We go to Whole Foods for the fresh-ground peanut butter. It's better than anything that comes in a jar, but the grinding machines need careful maintenance. Others go for fresh fruit and veggies, fresh fish, organics. That's the stuff that draws customers, but it costs money to do right. Without fresh-ground peanut butter, we don't go to WholeFoods. And if it's just another supermarket, we've got other options.
Sticking with Publix, thanks.
This is s a race. A race to the bottom. The sooner we get there the better.
More Wal-Mart jobs for everyone!!!
retarded..
the only reason to go to whole foods is the superior quality yet slightly higher prices items.
we don't need another fred meyer/wal mart/Safeway with all low quality highly processed cheaper stuff.
... I want some robot selecting my produce!
Will robots be able to tell the difference between brown spots on a ripe banana and bruises?
Will it be able to feel the soft spot on an apple and know that it'll turn mushy in a couple days?
Will it be able to choose 4 mangoes, in different stages of ripeness, so that they won't ripen all at the same time?
Or that the strawberries don't look ripe enough to buy, and that I'm better off not buying them?
So exactly how will those laid off with no income be able to purchase these lower priced goods?
Food stamps?
I always thought Fresh and Easy was a half-assed attempt to emulate the fabulously successful Marks & Spencer.
FTA: ...according to the person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named ... [discussed automated checkout systems] ... which would help Amazon differentiate itself in the brick-and-mortar setting and reduce labor costs at Whole Foods stores. The employees remaining would help improve the shopping experience, the person said.
Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman, said in a statement the company has “no plans to use no-checkout technology to automate the jobs of cashiers at Whole Foods and no job reductions are planned.” [emphasis mine]
Read between the lines. Spokesman said only that "no no-checkout" technology would be used (RFID-based). Spokesman did not say that no automated checkout lanes would be added. Also note the first source's language: "...employees remaining would..."
So, more obnoxious auto checkouts, and of course a bunch of layoffs of the cashiers.
Ya gotta deal with willow bark or some such BS, vs a med that's been around for a long time.
PS - love my Wegmans, they're just not close enough. Cannot see converting WF into Wegmans as WF has a lot less sq ft for merch
I'd be down with that...
When Apple gets undercut by other device manufacturers, what do they do, get into a price war? No, they expand their product lines and charge more. And they make a fuckton of profit. Whole Foods is never going to replace Walmart, so they shouldn't bother.
Whole Foods has built a premium brand and it's the only thing they have going for them. A race to the bottom is going to kill the brand for its current fans and fail to onboard any new fans because of their history.
Maybe this is Waterloo...
...I will never do the self checkout thing. If a store ever goes 100% sans cashiers, I will just go to one of their competitors who still value providing service to their customers.
Now if they want to offer me 5% off my bill for doing their job for them, I *might* consider it, but I'm a customer, not free labor.
similar to Walmart in terms of focus although not quite as cutthroat from what I've seen.
Amazon monitors the sales of its third party vendors to find which products they are having the most success with - and then starts selling those products directly and undercutting them. Seems pretty cutthroat to me.
Here's a pretty good summary by someone I've known for several decades, who practically invented the organic "business", and was a grower for WFM up until this year:
"I've had a couple of days to digest Amazon's hostile takeover of Whole Foods, and despite what organic boosters and corporate shills may say, this takeover is probably a very good marker for the end of an era.
As an agronomist and farmer I have always attempted to build organic certification as a marketing tool for the most agronomically-responsible growers, equally dedicated to land-care and to superior-quality food for the people eating the food we produce. In the early days the processors were *allies*, looking to expand markets for farmers.
Back in 1986 the first corporate player, and a small one at that, attempted to co-opt the term "organic" for his own shady marketing. I was able to scare him off with a couple of 25$ lawyer's "cease and desist" letters, but like the first cockroach, I knew there were more.
By 1993 the battle was fully engaged. Corporate players in the organic market -- at this point nearly all of them independent and small -- pushed for government standardization and control of organic certification, Here's the key thing ... those standards were to be a ceiling, as well as a floor. Nobody would be allowed to market one sort of organic certification as any better than any other. No higher standards allowed.
It took until 2003 to put it all in place, and it is little surprise that the rampant buyouts and corporate concentration in processed organic foods began at that point. Some fifteen years later essentially *zero* independent organic processors remain.
What's more, back 20 years ago total organic sales (USA) were about 8 Billion dollars, of which organic farmers garnered about half. These days organic sales are nearly 50 billion dollars, of which organic farmers (and there are a lot more of them now) receive perhaps 6 Billion dollars.
The corporate profits from the word "organic" are astounding. The consumers are wishful suckers. I have inspected many hundreds of processing operations for certification, and have a tremendously good idea of what a small percentage of the consumer price is related to ingredients. I'm talking low single digits of retail price. The rest of the markup is captured by corporate players.
Whole Foods hung on for a long time as an independent player, but were blind-sided by a couple of slick New York hedge-fund sharks who quietly bought up enough shares to exert effective control. Typically that's 10 percent of shares. Founder John Mackey last week publicly called the two of them "bastards", but it was too late.
There are many possible places this all can go, none of them good. As but one example, Amazon has just patented a system [Slashdot covered this 2 days ago ] which will not only track any individual customer's movement in their stores, and not only link to that customer's personal demographics, but will also force all that customer's internet activity to go through the store's wifi and blocking -- key part of the patent -- any attempts to comparison shop using any device whatever.
I devoted my entire career to building an agronomically-sound organic industry, particularly at the level of the well-managed family farm. I lost. The organic premium was intended to compensate *growers* for the extra effort required to care properly for the land. These days the entire market value of the word "organic" is being liquidated and monetized by a handful of huge corporations.
With a very few exceptions -- Organic Valley dairy products chief amongst them -- it is now quite simply a waste of your money to purchase organic anything, especially if it's a processed food. You pay dollars more and the farmer sees a couple of cents.
Do not be suckered in by an organic label any longer, except when you buy direct from farmers you know and trust."
This doesn't strike me as particularly dishonest. Is organic produce really healthier than the alternative?
The evidence to date largely shows that there is little or no measurable benefit to organic produce over non-organic. There is nothing fraudulent about offering organic for sale per-se though it's not clear there is any actual benefit to it either. However the moment they promote it as "healthier" then they have stepped over a line because to date there is basically no evidence to support that claim. People assume organic should be better because there is a certain logic to the idea but that isn't the same thing as showing evidence that it actually improves nutrition, helps the environment, or decreases health problems. I admit I even like the idea of organic foods myself but my inner scientist still wants to see the evidence before getting too excited.
Is it healthy to avoid GMOs? Doesn't matter; there are customers for that.
Which is fine for people who live in an evidence free world. Again, there is no known harm from consuming GMOs (we've been genetically modifying foods since humans domesticated crops and animals) but if someone is willing to pay to avoid them, who cares? It's like the ridiculous number of people buying gluten free foods who do not actually have any actual physical issues with gluten. If the only harm is to stupid rich people's wallets then fine but I'm not thrilled about letting people be taken advantage of. People are imagining possible harms that don't appear to actually exist and for which they have no evidence that they exist and paying someone to provide them a product that avoids their imagined non-problem. Whole Foods is taking advantage of people who aren't very good at rational thought by cleverly marketing "benefits" that haven't actually been shown to exist. It's a little shady in my opinion.
Are their homeopathic "cures" better than the alternatives? Same answer.
You seem to have missed the point. Homeopathy is snake oil. It's fraudulently taking people's money for a placebo. By definition it doesn't work and there is no physical mechanism by which if can work. It's been studied and proven to not work. The problem isn't that their homeopathy is different from others. The problem is that Whole Foods shouldn't be selling homeopathic "remedies" in the first place. It's fraud.
There's nothing inherently dishonest about making the items available for sale
In the case of homeopathy I completely disagree. EVERYTHING about homeopathy is dishonest. I'm frankly stunned that it is legal to sell.
I agree that you can get similar or better quality at other places on some items. You can go to a good local butcher to get good meats and cheeses. You can go to a local farm stand and get better veggies, etc. I think the advantage of Whole Foods is that you can get all that in one place. I'm not a frequent Whole Foods shopper but when I go I do notice much higher quality (albeit at a much higher price) than my local chain stores (stop and shop, market basket, shaws), especially for meats.
I can go to a nearby farmer's market and get a good approximation of what I can get at Whole Foods in one place. Excellent produce and meats and there is a top shelf meat market and fish monger and deli literally right next door for anything not carried by the local purveyors in the market. I also have three road side veggie stands, one upscale grocery store (plus three normal ones), and an awesome butcher on my drive home from work. Maybe not all under one roof but hardly inconvenient. In the summer I can pick up corn from a stand that was on a plant less than 6 hours prior. Whole Foods couldn't match that if they tried.
A question for Midwest slashdotters: how common are they in the Midwest, compared to other grocery stores?
There are several Whole Foods in most major metro areas - they have over 400 stores nationwide. I have 5 within a 30 mile radius of where I live. Unsurprisingly they tend to be in relatively affluent areas. You could answer your question on their website. It's not hard to find them. However in my town (Metro Detroit/Ann Arbor) there are several other upscale grocery store options within driving distance. One of them is a blatant local knock off of Whole Foods and another is actually better in my opinion. We also have a wide variety of specialty markets, many of which put Whole Foods to shame.
If Amazon really wants to drop prices to attract a lower income crowd, then I'd think they'd want to start building them in areas that are accessible to that crowd (not that the Midwest is all low income, just that it's easier to access high income folks in coastal urban areas).
I think you need to actually spend time in the Midwest because you clearly have some misconceptions about the region. You seem to think that folks in the Midwest are poorer which simply isn't true as a general proposition - they're just less densely packed outside of the major metro areas but that's not really any different anywhere. It's just as easy to find high income people in the midwest as it is on the coasts - possibly even easier if anything. You simply go to the towns where they live. Look at a map of where Whole Foods stores are located and you'll have a pretty good idea where the money is in a given metro area. I live in a location that someone from Boston would probably classify as semi-rural (lots of hobby farms) and I can be in a Nordstroms in an upscale mall within 30 minutes of leaving my house. Furthermore cost of living in most of the Midwest is FAR lower than places like Boston so "low income" doesn't mean quite the same thing here and your money tends to go a fair bit farther.
I went to school on the east coast so I've seen a lot of folks from NYC and Boston and Philly who really don't have a clue what life is like in the midwest. They often think it is all farm country full of uneducated hicks and that there is nothing interesting happening. It's not true at all of course but since they've never spent any time here they have no idea. Major cities are pretty much the same no matter where you go. There is nothing in Boston has that you won't find a rough approximation to in Metro Detroit or Cleveland or Chicago. People who live elsewhere think Detroit is some sort of desolate wasteland. While it's certainly got some issues if you were to come to downtown Detroit today you'd find it's a VERY nice place to be (yes there is a Whole Fo
The one by here has an entire medicine aisle. Except, of course, it's homeopathic because of course it is.
If it is full of homeopathic "cures" then it is by definition not a medicine aisle.
We really don't have as much interesting tech now that everything' been outsourced to Indians that can't really do anything. It's just one retarded social media app after another, a high tech version of everybody selling McBurgers to each other.
They find another place they can offer value in exchange for money, then use said money to buy groceries at the more affordable WF. The current situation is working for WF while only making enough to shop at Walmart for groceries.
It's amusing that since I say I live in Boston you think I haven't been to the midwest. To be clear I have family in the midwest and do very much work in the midwest, (I frequently work in Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois).
Arkansas isn't really considered part of the Midwest and Nebraska and Kansas sometimes aren't either depending who you ask. I'm being pedantic though. While no insult was intended, I suggested you learn more about the Midwest because your comments sound an awful lot like someone who hasn't really lived there. It sounds like you've been spending a fair bit of time in the more rural parts but that's FAR from the whole picture. Most of the population in the Midwest lives in or near a major metro area which are very comparable to most any urban coastal city you care to mention aside from some regional quirks.
The income levels in the rural midwest are lower than on the coastal urban areas, as shown in this map:
Apples to oranges. Income levels in urban Midwest are higher than rural coastal area too. That's mostly an urban vs rural thing, not a Midwest versus coast thing. The Midwest isn't just farming communities - not even close. The majority of the population in Missouri lives in either Saint Louis metro or Kansas City. 3/4 of the population of Illinois lives in Chicago-land (9 of 12 million). Nearly half of Michigan lives near Detroit. Over half of Ohio (pop 11.6 million) lives near either Cleveland, Columbus or Cincinnati.
Find me a dozen millionaires in Portis, KS. If I throw a rock in Manhattan I'll probably hit a couple millionaires in one throw.
I'll be happy to take you to the locations in the midwest if you want to club multiple millionaires with rocks. Every major metro area has them. Manhattan may have more than average but drive through some place like Ladue Missouri or Birmingham Michigan and you are in a place that is is positively lousy with them. Heck, Oakland County just north of the City of Detroit is one of the ten wealthiest counties in the entire US. Go to The Loop in Chicago and it's not so different from Manhattan.
You're telling me about the Detroit/Ann Arbor Whole Foods experience, which is not rural in the same way that central Kansas is, nor is it in the lower income areas. I have been to plenty of places in midwest rural areas where the only game in town is a Walmart, even for groceries. If Amazon/Whole Foods wants to access those people, they'll have to build there. There are 4 Whole Foods in Kansas - 728,000 people per store. There are 30 Whole Foods in Massachusetts - 227,000 people per store.
You asked how many there were in the Midwest. In the urban areas where most people in the Midwest actually live there are quite a few Whole Foods stores. You're quite correct that if you get out into the really rural areas that you aren't going to find much that is fancier than a Walmart in many cases. Population density plays more into this than income disparity. A premium store like Whole Foods doesn't work unless there is a certain population density to work with. Plenty of places in the Midwest have that and that's where most Midwesterners also happen to live.
Nah, the only REAL difference is that your local Whole Foods, in addition to providing a unique shopping experience for idiot hippies who believe in homeopathy, will now be an Amazon Prime Drop for those times when a 2 hour delivery window is not short enough.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Organic is not nonsense. Organic produce has lower levels of potentially harmful pesticide residues and organic farming contributes less to soil and water pollution. More importantly, the requirements of organic farming certicification include lifestock welfare condition standards above other levels of certification (e.g. free range).