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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

#81

Post by scotchio »

illumin8 wrote: post #71
scotchio wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean to be fair, most of the jobs at WF stores ARE unskilled labor though.

Not true. I know several people that have good careers at WF and would be offended by the fact that you think they are unskilled. Seasonal workers in the FCs literally get only 4 hours of training and are then filling orders. That's the pure definition of unskilled, and a far cry from a pastry chef at WF.

What I mean is you don't necessarily need a college education to work in any of their departments. Not trying to be offensive

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#82

Post by aptwebapps »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #35
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 rea…

Also, it's only the top level of management, loosely speaking, that's easily swappable. Most of the bureaucracy stays in place.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#83

Post by emodendroket »

illumin8 wrote: post #71
scotchio wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean to be fair, most of the jobs at WF stores ARE unskilled labor though.

Not true. I know several people that have good careers at WF and would be offended by the fact that you think they are unskilled. Seasonal workers in the FCs literally get only 4 hours of training and are then filling orders. That's the pure definition of unskilled, and a far cry from a pastry chef at WF.

So the people stocking the shelves and operating the registers are all highly skilled labor?

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#84

Post by dkural »

dexterdog wrote: post #16
dkural wrote: post #6

Better buy than Slack for $9B.

I was thinking exactly the same thing except that WF might be a less profitable business.

I think in the long run you are likely be right - at scale software margins are amazing. As of today, Slack looses some money & is unprofitable.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#85

Post by sparkpeasy »

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).

The major player currently is Walmart for most Americans. It's investing into online at a rapid pace, they recently added free online pickup for groceries and purchased Jet and Bonobos, so I think the real war will be between Walmart and Amazon/WF.

Value basics and speciality stores like Aldi and Trader Joes (which have very spotty coverage currently in the US) and regional full-inventory stores (Piggly Wiggly, Harris Teeter, Bi-lo etc) will pick up the crumbs.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#86

Post by wu-ikkyu »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #35
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 rea…

>if Amazon stop running well then someone else will come along and replace them

Is this really true though? Over the past few decades we've seen that if a company is big enough, and it fails, the government will step in and prop it up with a bailout.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#87

Post by adventured »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #23

https://twitter.com/dkberman/status/875701677504024576 "Amazon did not just buy Whole Foods grocery stores. It bought 431 upper-income, prime-location distribution nodes for everything it does."

No they didn't.

They just bought a higher income grocery business, which they were aggressively seeking to dive deeper into. They'll use the locations for pick-up & delivery points plausibly and they'll bind it to Prime in various ways. They'll probably also leverage Whole Foods into smaller, smart / automated stores, micro whole foods stores in the image they've been experimenting with for self-shopping.

It would have cost them billions to build out the grocery distribution points they were planning to do anyway. They'll save a lot on that cost, and meanwhile the Whole Foods business is generating $500m per year in net income consistently, over ten years it'll plausibly nicely chop into that purchase price and or fund Amazon's experiments.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#88

Post by kgwgk »

ckastner wrote: post #65
AndrewDucker wrote: post #23

https://twitter.com/dkberman/status/875701677504024576 "Amazon did not just buy Whole Foods grocery stores. It bought 431 upper-income, prime-location distribution nodes for everything it does."

$13.7B / 431 = $31.79m per store. I have zero experience with real estate prices for retail outlets, but it feels as if that's a bit on the high end?

They only own 18 of those stores, anyway.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#89

Post by zebrafish »

maxerickson wrote: post #56
AndrewDucker wrote: post #23

https://twitter.com/dkberman/status/875701677504024576 "Amazon did not just buy Whole Foods grocery stores. It bought 431 upper-income, prime-location distribution nodes for everything it does."

I don't think that is right, Whole Foods stores are already full of...food. They don't have room for hundreds of additional products, never mind tens of thousands.

The products Amazon is trying to distribute with this deal are.... food products.
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