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Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

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Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#31

Post by dx034 »

rmoriz wrote: post #24

Looks to me like the ultimate war between grocery stores in the US will be fought out between Amazon/WFM (premium, delivery) and ALDI/Lidl (discount, no-frills). As a German I'm amazed by the "food haul" videos on YouTube and the positive feedback for ALDI US (belongs to ALDI Süd), Trader Joe's (ALDI Nord) and Lidl (part of Schwarz Gruppe, they just started in the US yesterday).

Trader Joe's could also play a role. Basically also Aldi, just the other part (Aldi North whereas Aldi stores in the US are run by Aldi South). They have the money and motivation to really fight back and know how to achieve the same cost level as Aldi/Lidl.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#32

Post by emodendroket »

pc86 wrote: post #19
_7siz wrote: post #10

Oof. I wonder what this means for Whole Foods culture and employees. If you don't know, John Mackey, the CEO / founder, is a major believer in conscious capitalism and of empowering his employees. Whole Food employees get paid pretty darn well with some crazy good benefits for their industry and line-of-work (UNION FREE most of the time too!). WF banks on them being true believers and motivators of the cause - includ…

It's nice to see non-union employees treated well and paid well, not because of any negative feelings toward unions or unionization, but because I think it shows that you can be a successful capitalist without trying to suck every ounce of productivity and profit out of your lowest-paid employees.

Maybe, but the fact that they were just acquired by a company notorious for abusing its low-level employees shows the limitations of this model (as did the pressure they began to face from investors to tighten up on that front when they started to become less profitable).

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#35

Post by AndrewDucker »

phreeza wrote: post #21

Somewhat off topic, but I have had a weird thought circulating in my head (triggered by reading Red Plenty) that I wanted to put out there: What is the relationship between a centrally planned economy as for example Gosplan was trying to run in the USSR, and the presence of these huge market-like but centralized entities like Amazon and Wal-Mart inside a free-market economy? This becomes particularly interesting beca…

The major difference is that if Amazon stop running well then someone else will come along and replace them. Whereas government is a monopoly, so if it runs badly then it doesn't automatically get replaced.

Now, democracy is supposed to fix this, by allowing you to vote for a different supplier of government every few years. But because of the voting system in some countries (like the US and the UK) it's actually really hard to do this, because everything gets turned into a black/white struggle between opposing forces, rather than lots of options being available for you make a choice between.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#36

Post by jordache »

opportune wrote: post #12
whatok wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Said it will operate as a standalone business for now.

Completely standalone, or integrated into the Amazon infrastructure while maintaining the Whole Foods brand and product line? I could see Amazon using whole foods as a kind of local "base" for grocery delivery services. Having a physical store to offload perishables onto if online demand doesn't match supply really makes sense.

Margin on them asparagus water is tremendous!

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#37

Post by bspn »

_7siz wrote: post #10

Oof. I wonder what this means for Whole Foods culture and employees. If you don't know, John Mackey, the CEO / founder, is a major believer in conscious capitalism and of empowering his employees. Whole Food employees get paid pretty darn well with some crazy good benefits for their industry and line-of-work (UNION FREE most of the time too!). WF banks on them being true believers and motivators of the cause - includ…

I think Zappos is a probably a pretty good proxy. They too had a very different culture to Amazon at the time of acquisition, but I believe it has largely remained intact many years post-acquisition.

Amazon as a company has many flaws in its culture (if we are to believe the reports), but they seem to do acquisitions pretty well and know when to leave things alone and let them do their thing.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#38

Post by bjelkeman-again »

dx034 wrote: post #26
pc86 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice to see non-union employees treated well and paid well, not because of any negative feelings toward unions or unionization, but because I think it shows that you can be a successful capitalist without trying to suck every ounce of productivity and profit out of your lowest-paid employees.

While I fully agree that it's great to see employees treated well, Whole Foods is not an example that you can be a successful capitalist this way. They worked well for a while but the reason they got bought now is because they struggled over the past years. Probably unrelated to their treatment of employees (US groceries is very competitive at the moment) but AMZN didn't buy a hugely successful company.

The day I sell a company for $13Bn I will declare myself successful. Not everything is going to be a a half a trillion dollar company.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#39

Post by dx034 »

dharma1 wrote: post #18
buryat wrote: post #11

I wonder if they're going to implement Amazon Go in Whole Foods https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16008589011

pretty sure that's the partly the motivation behind the acquisition

Probably in the long term. Over the next years, the technology is not likely to be ready for the number of customers a wholefoods can have.

But the stores should work well as distribution centers for grocery (and other) deliveries.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#40

Post by swalsh »

_7siz wrote: post #10

Oof. I wonder what this means for Whole Foods culture and employees. If you don't know, John Mackey, the CEO / founder, is a major believer in conscious capitalism and of empowering his employees. Whole Food employees get paid pretty darn well with some crazy good benefits for their industry and line-of-work (UNION FREE most of the time too!). WF banks on them being true believers and motivators of the cause - includ…

Considering Amazon has been developing technology for walk in, and walk out checkout, and owns a robotics company, there might be a lot less of them.
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