Mine, too. Makes me reluctant to ever set food in a Whole Foods again. I mostly shop at Wegman’s, when north, and at Public, Trader Joe’s, and Fresh Market when south, but sometimes there’s a special something at Whole Foods. I shall avoid that now.
I’ve never seen one that I could describe as angry, nor have I ever heard it described that way before… Mostly pretty mellow. But the emphasis on vegetarian and soy foods, increasing since Bittman got involved, puts it lower on the list for me … we have serious soy allergies in my family, and there is a LOT of soy protein in a lot of the prepared foods. Poison for us.
When I am in the south and shopping for my elderly parents, Whole Foods and Fresh Market are in competition with one another. Although we often buy more at Fresh Market, the employees there are arrogant a*holes who often don’t want to wait on you. Whole Foods people have been invariably friendly and helpful, without attitude.
When i’m back up north, Wegman’s is the best. And, for cheap goodness, Trader Joe’s, when I can get into a bigger city. I loathe Aldi’s.
Market Cap is useful for measuring the ability of a company to access capital. It would be a huge bite for Amazon to buy Walmart but they might be able to based on the difference in Market Cap.
Of course, Amazon was able to buy whole foods out of their cash reserves.
Oops, did I say million, I meant billion…
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I don’t understand this. If Amazon’s purpose is to turn Whole Foods stores into Amazon pickup/delivery hubs, then they are going to have to reduce the floor space that current stores use to sell and display their current lines.
If people can order Mountain Dew and Cheetos and go pick them up at Whole Foods (or get them delivered), then Whole Foods is going to need to move out the Gluten-Free Himalayan Organic Kale® to make room for lockers and stocks of regular-people groceries.
So why buy up an expensive specialty chain and gut its core business in order to basically set up warehouses for online shopping?
Why would they do that? One article I read suggested that they’d do that because they acquired 300+ stores in upscale neighborhoods and that in and of itself is very valuable.
I don’t know much about the stock market, but I believe that I heard on the news that the increase in the stock price today was enough to cover the purchase of whole foods in total.
That and the associated distribution network. This is not a play to add delivery lockers, this is a move to expand Amazon Fresh, and that requires distribution facilities.
Well, that and their new grocery store model they’re playing with in Seattle. I peeked in the windows last trip up there (I’m not in the beta and can’t go in) and was intrigued. No checkout stands at all, just grab all of our stuff and pay electronically as you walk out the door.
I wonder if some of the other major companies are starting to feel like pygmies in a boxing ring with two giants. It was Kroger’s stock price that was most affected by the news of Amazon buying Whole Foods.
A merger with Amazon will pretty much end Whole Foods business model.
Fresh organic food isn’t exactly what Amazon wants to sell. I see Amazon focusing on mainstream groceries.
They may pay lip service to organic but Amazon is all about selling to the masses.
There’s an article on Slate right now that explains this better than I can. Basically it’s because in shipping and delivering items to customers, it’s that last mile from the big distribution hubs that is the most expensive and least efficient. If you can encourage your customers to pick up the items at the distribution center, it saves you a ton of time & effort. Plus, it encourages your customers to make deeper use of your whole ecosystem. The whole article is worth a read.
I buy a lot of clothes from Lands End. They have consistent sizing, they’re reasonably priced and their online store is aces. For a while there (don’t know if it’s still a thing) they were owned by Sears and if you needed to return something you could just drop it at the Sears store and they’d handle it. It was super useful because we could, say, buy a bunch of shoes and then easily return the ones that didn’t fit. We ended up buying more clothes there because it was easier to try stuff out.
I expect if Amazon did something like that at their new local store, it would encourage more people to do everything at Amazon.
Amazon seems to be forgetting that most small families buy small amounts of groceries frequently.
I may stop at the store for eggs and bread, Monday. Wed, I stop for milk, hamburger meat and a few other items. Sat, I buy steaks, frozen fries, charcoal and beer.
That seems very, very common. I see a lot of people checking out with less than 12 items.
Stores are scattered around cities so they are easy stops on the way home from work. It doesn’t require any effort.
The shipping costs would be horrendous for a constant stream of small purchases.
You would need to plan and purchase several weeks of groceries to buy from Amazon. I wouldn’t do that. I never plan my meals that far ahead. I may get up tomorrow morning and buy a roast to cook for dinner.
Heck, I’d drive 50 miles to visit a Wegman’s. Unfortunately, the nearest one to me is 500 miles away.
That’s not really how Amazon Fresh works. First, they aren’t shipping your groceries so much as they are delivering them. From the nearest store or distribution center, hence the Whole Foods purchase. When I was a regular user of the service it could be same day down to just a few hours. Tiny orders are discouraged by having a minimum order size.
Second, their newest model involves ordering online, then dropping by the store you selected on the way home. You park in a special lot and someone brings everything out and loads your car. Five minutes, tops. I don’t believe there’s a minimum order size here.
When I still lived in their service area, it was a tremendous help in meal planning. Instead of my typical disorganized store roaming, with the associated quick trips to buy addition items through the week, I could just open up an order and dump recipes and needed household items into the list until I felt like I had a comprehensive order, then I’d pull the trigger. It also eliminated a lot of the impulse buys that were ruining my diet.
AF’s pricing was equivalent to the mid- to upper-tier grocery stores in my city, but I still tended to save money by wasting less food and buying what I did need more thoughtfully. I miss the service badly.
What is ironic is that is not a new model at all. That is the way all grocery stores used to work until Piggly Wiggly was founded as the first self-service supermarket just about 100 years ago. Before that, you took a list to a clerk and they got everything on it for you. There was no roaming the isles to browse and figure out what you wanted.
Wow; I can see where that could be time consuming.
Getting the queen to grant you a ship and a parrot was simply just a pain in the ass. Once you arrived at the isles, even roaming the aisles in every merchant port could take quite of bit of time too.
This is fascinating. I’ve posted a few things over the recent months, talking about how Walmart has one advantage over Amazon, because of their gigantic network of physical stores. A lot of people on this board thought I was wrong. I pointed out Walmart’s efforts to make things more convenient for customers, such as their new grocery pick-up service. Some people on this board were very skeptical of this endeavor.
And yet–lo and behold! We see Amazon taking steps to make their model more like Walmart’s–having the customer pick up the order at a physical store. And, miraculously, everybody suddenly seems to think that it’s the most wonderful, convenient thing since sliced bread.
Nonsense. Look up “sugar” at Walmart and Amazon.
For me Walmart returns:
First: 4 pound bag of Domino Premium Sugar Cane Granulated Sugar for $2.56. Second: 10 pound bag of C&H granulated sugar for $6.48. Third: 4 pound bag of Great Value Cane Sugar for $3.02
Amazon returns:
First: 3 pound bag of Organic Cane Sugar (3 Pounds) by Anthony’s, Certified for $10.99 (sponsored result). Second: 4 pound bag of C&H Granulated Sugar from 3rd party sellers at $12.99. Third: 4 pound canister of Domino Granulated Sugar for 9.68
[And if you click the Pantry Box which you would expect to be cheaper you start with Organic Cane Sugar, 4 pounds, at .9.99]
The online Walmart prices are comparable or better than what you get at your local supermarket. The Amazon prices for your basic staples are often crazily high. Amazon is definitely not about selling groceries to the mainstream, so it is compatible with the higher priced Whole Foods.