Amazon Fresh
C&H Sugar 4 lb 2.39
CNN interviewed a real pro about this deal; her name is Alexa. Like a press secretary, she only answers what she wants to.
I’ve heard there are people who have this strange near-obsession with Wegman’s. I don’t get it. It’s a nice store, but it’s still just a grocery store.
Exactly. Amazon is not in the business of selling groceries, Amazon Fresh is. Gotta be browsing the right site.
The problem is that there are a lot more shit grocery stores than “nice” grocery stores.
Update: The buyout went through and Amazon began immediately slashing prices at Whole Foods.
I paused at Whole Foods on the way in to work this morning, and noticed little brown signs posted here and there noting those items whose prices were slashed. The signs read something like “Whole Foods partnered with Amazon Prime”. I only needed one of the on-sale items, an avocado, which was 30% less due to Amazon.
I’m curious how the Prime/Whole Foods discounts will work at the stores. Will Amazon issue a “Prime Card” or will Whole Foods ask for the email address associated with the account or…?
Well, I’ve already got an Amazon Prime credit card, so there’s a possibility.
Ooh I wonder if my Prime card will get me 5% cash back at Whole Foods…
To answer this from a couple months ago, I don’t foresee Amazon gutting the Whole Foods stores and literally turning them into warehouses. But a grocery store open to the public already is a warehouse.
You’re confusing a couple of things. You can already order a dizzying array of shelf-stable foods from regular Amazon.com. These items are shipped via UPS or whatever to your house just like books or condoms or fleece pullovers. Amazon doesn’t need any additional infrastructure for shelf-stable items, they’ve already got that covered.
The real move is into fresh groceries, which is Amazon Fresh. And that’s a premium service where you can order fresh groceries and have them delivered to your home. Stocking and delivering fresh groceries is a whole different business than shipping shelf-stable items. Can you also get Cheetos with your fresh kale and heirloom alfalfa sprouts? Sure. But that’s not the value added.
In order to deliver groceries, or have them packed and waiting for pickup, you need to have the equivalent of a fully stocked grocery store. That could be a distribution center that’s closed to the public, or it could very well be a Whole Foods grocery story that has a lot of employees packing delivery bags. If you were setting up a new fresh grocery distribution center, it might save you some money to create warehouse type center that isn’t open to the public. But if you already own a bunch of customer friendly grocery stores near the last mile from customer’s homes, then keeping those stores open to the public as well as delivering makes sense.
Not that Amazon Fresh is going to make a lot of profit any time soon. It’s probably going to lose a lot of money for a long time. But unlike lots of their competitors, Amazon isn’t scared of barely breaking even, that’s their whole business model.