Amazon to buy Whole Foods

Deal announced this morning. Amazon paying $13.9 billion for Whole Foods. Guess they'll be able to deliver items faster. As an interesting aside, there was a report on CBS radio few weeks back that Whole Foods and Trader Joes were comparison shopped for about 30 of the same items at the two stores in Union Square. Trader Joes was $30 cheaper. So maybe Whole Foods really is "whole paycheck."

People also really seem to like the Hawaiian shirts their staff wears.

Don't shop at either place so I wouldn't know

I go to Trader Joe's regularly to stock up on chocolate and cheese. I rarely go to Whole Foods.

One can imagine that if Amazon owns a grocery chain it probably won't be known for its high prices anymore. Amazon hasn't announced their game plan yet, but I feel like this a 'changing food shopping as we know it' type thing. Kind of exciting.

I've been ordering groceries through Amazon Fresh for the last several months, after making the switch from Fresh Direct. The prices were just too high through Fresh Direct, even taking into consideration the extra money you're paying up front in the form of Prime and the monthly fee for Fresh. Companies rightly realize that groceries are the most regular and predictable purchases most people make. So this is a fight for the retail Holy Grail, with Amazon, Walmart, and Kroger all fighting it out for market share. As the resident vegan, I'd love to have the range of vegan products Whole Foods offers through Fresh. While solid, the vegan options available through Fresh don't come close to matching those available through Whole Foods. It'll also be interesting to see whether this impacts the cost of food at Whole Foods moving forward, as the Amazon and Whole Foods brands are known for quite different things, particularly when it comes to cost and value.

I don't know what to make of this news. How will this change things for Whole Foods?

pragmaticguy said:

Deal announced this morning. Amazon paying $13.9 billion for Whole Foods. Guess they'll be able to deliver items faster. As an interesting aside, there was a report on CBS radio few weeks back that Whole Foods and Trader Joes were comparison shopped for about 30 of the same items at the two stores in Union Square. Trader Joes was $30 cheaper. So maybe Whole Foods really is "whole paycheck."

Only $30 cheaper?

I bet the savings would be larger if one were comparing Aldi's with Whole Foods.