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Amazon To Complete $13.7B Whole Foods Deal Monday, Promises Lower Prices and Prime Integration (geekwire.com)
Amazon announced today that its $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods will close this Monday, Aug. 28, and revealed how it plans to lower prices and integrate its Prime membership program into the Whole Foods checkout process. From a report: Amazon said that starting Monday, it will lower prices of items at Whole Foods like organic bananas, brown eggs, salmon, ground beef, and more. It also plans to "make Amazon Prime the customer rewards program at Whole Foods Market and continuously lower prices as we invent together," as Jeff Wilke, CEO of Amazon's consumer business, said in a press release. Amazon will place its Amazon Lockers package pickup machines in some Whole Foods stores. It will also make Whole Foods' private label products available on its website, on AmazonFresh, on Prime Pantry, and Prime Now. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey will stay in his current role, and Whole Foods' HQ will remain in Austin. The grocer will maintain operations under its current brand.
Twinkies taste totally different now, Crystal Pepsi is off the shelves, and nobody stocks comics anymore, not even Archives.
Amazon has blown this acquisition. 'Whole Paycheck' was for those people who like to impress each other with how much the overpay (for the same stuff).
Cutting the price of 'pre distressed blue jeans' lowers sales, duh.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Supermarkets already track everything you buy and correlate these purchases with a whole host of other data to cater their inventories to the communities they serve -- but Whole Foods will have an advantage they don't: cross-references to your entire purchase history of sundries online. They can aggressively market to customers they already know they have (your billing and delivery addresses plus Prime membership, 'natch). Home delivery? You bet. Drone delivery? Maybe! Entire aisles of not-food products you would not be getting inferior versions of by purchasing from a supermarket? No doubt.
All for the low low price of a megacorporation knowing everything there is to know about you.
... continuously lower prices as we invent together"
Soon we're going to start seeing Whole Foods commercials on TV. They will feature smiling Whole Foods employees, standing next to their products under a large sign with the price. Then the smiling head of Jeff Bezos will bounce into the frame, hit the price and cause it to go down.
Then the motto will appear at the end of the spot - "Whole Foods. Continuously lower prices, always."
#DeleteChrome
Did they not do any research on who actually shops at Whole Foods? People who are paying $10 for a jar of asparagus water or $8 for a bag of organic gluten/grain/fat/salt/flavor free chips generally aren't the penny pinching type. People go to Whole Foods because they want specialty stuff that regular chains don't carry not for low prices. The Prime integration piece might fit in well though.
Personally I don't see these two companies as being a good fit, but Amazon has the money to keep it going even if it tanks.
Is it wrong that the most exciting part of this announcement is that hopefully we can get some more amazon lockers and hopefully return drop off points? I know if each whole foods had a locker, it would be a lot more convenient.
Costco seems to offer the ability to cover those needs far more economically than Whole Paycheck. The fact they don't even have Whole Paychecks in this city other than in the gay district and a couple of yuppy colonies keeps the temptation to waste my paycheck on items that are rapidly becoming available at the "normal" grocery stores, and not just in the ever expanding hippie isles makes me wonder if it's worth looking at. Even Wal-Mart has organic stuff under their own Great Value label these days.
Too little too late.
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Great. Amazon.com now sells grocery items.
Meanwhile, in Canada, Amazon.ca doesn't even sell their own Amazon Fire tablets.
#DeleteFacebook
Dear Amazon WFoods, Walmart, Meijer, Kroger, et al.
If you want my money, bring back Milk Crates. All of the 'get groceries delivered' services I've seen use most inefficient process possible. The store pays people minimum wage on the night shift to unpack boxes and palates of food items, arrange them on a shelf so that I can pay someone else to take it off the shelf and deliver it to me.
Cut out the middle man. Pack a milk crate full of what I want in a central warehouse. Pay drives to drop them on my front door. Cut out the electricity, real estate and overhead of running a store. When my next shipment comes pick up my empty milk crates. That way I don't have to breakdown a dozen boxes a week for recycling.
Milk crates are the ultimate utility cargo container. You can fit a single one on the back of a bike. They stack well, you can strap a large number down to a trailer. The large transit vans will easily fit a neighborhood's worth of them. They're strong, light weight and in a pinch can be used to build a college dorm room.
Stores need to be a fraction of the size they are now. I went wandering to see what my local big box store had. DVDs and CDs had almost as much foot print as produce. I can't think of the last time anyone I knew *had* to go get Grownups 2 at 2 in the morning.
Amazon has blown this acquisition. 'Whole Paycheck' was for those people who like to impress each other with how much the overpay (for the same stuff).
It's pricey, but for a while Whole Foods was the only grocery store chain that didn't suck. Before WF, your A&P, Safeway, Krogers, Food Lion, were all in a race to the bottom, closing in-store bakeries and butchers, closing check-out lanes, sad wilting produce, E. coli meat, and zombie employees shambling over to clean up that mess in aisle number 3.
Profit margins at grocery chains were already razor thin when Wal-Mart announced they'd hop into the business and drive them all down the tube. Whole Foods at least worked to make the experience NOT a trip through the morgue, which probably encouraged the growth of Trader Joe's, Harris-Teeter, and even the big stores to trade up and try to make food shopping suck less.
Yeah, you gotta pay, but nothing's free.
Now, if Amazon can get Whole Foods to deliver my dinner direct by drone, I'd drop some pay to see that.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
make Amazon Prime the customer rewards program at Whole Foods
Every other grocer offers their rewards program for free. Whole Paycheck? $99.
You had better believe that Kroger and the other supermarket chains are quaking in their collective boots over this. Amazon does this all the time. They find business segments that are poorly run - book publishing, TV/Movie/Music, etc. - with poor customer service and they swoop in and take over it.
Supermarkets are burdened with having to deal with literally hundreds of union locals. They have been slow to embrace technology. Supermarkets operate on extraordinarily thin margins. They were slow to catch on to the organic food trend, thus allowing the growth of Whole Foods and others in the first place.
Next time you're in a grocery store take notice of how it is laid out. Lots of vertical aisles. Impulse items at the cash registers. Necessities (eggs, milk, bread, etc.) at the very back of the store. Junk food is always between the front of the store and the necessities. Promoted products are at eye level on the shelves, other products at the bottom where you might not see them.
Every Kroger or Safeway store looks exactly like this. And it has for the past 50 years. This is not exactly an industry of innovation. Amazon, pardon the pun, is going to eat their lunch.
They're not buying Whole Foods. They're buying whole foods' distribution network of refrigerated storage and freezers, so they can distribute "whole foods TM" brand amazon crap.
If I bought whole foods I'd load their customer database into Amazon, ban everyone on it, and then liquidate the company. Just on principal I wouldn't want clueless paranoid new-age idiots who think gluten and GMOs are going to kill them to be my customers no matter how much money they give me.
It'll be interesting to see how Amazon implements selling to different customers at different prices, considering that prime membership costs $100 more than a typical grocery store loyalty card. Costco and Sam's Club have paid memberships, but they don't mix selling to members and non-members for different prices. However strictly Amazon enforces the membership requirement for discount, some people who paid the $100 will be making cheating accusations, and others will be wanting to use their membership to help out random strangers. OTOH, I know several people who will say "Here's my debit card and PIN. Buy this for me while you're at the store." and no one seems to care about the behavior that's identical to the behavior of someone who stole those things, so maybe it won't matter.
make Amazon Prime the customer rewards program at Whole Foods Market and continuously lower prices as we invent together
In other words, if you are a Whole Foods market supplier, you would better purchase a rope to hang yourself right now, because you may not be able to afford that in a few months.
These comments really make it clear how horrible most people's diets are. It's obvious that a big chunk of the people commenting never eat anything that isn't junk food or heavily processed sugary garbage.
No, you don't.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Amazon (a pricey retailer themselves) promises lower prices.
Excuse me while I scratch my head over that one.
Get ready to drive a LONG distance to find a grocery store. There are so few towns that have grocery stores "near" me, it's pathetic already.