Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#151

Post by nilved » Fri, Jun 16, 2017, 1:59 PM UTC

illumin8 wrote: post #55

_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…

Disclaimer: I work for AWS, but my opinions are my own. I don't think you have much to worry about if you're a WF employee. Amazon actually treats their employees very well. In my experience here, I've never seen any of the things the NY times article talked about, either on my team or any other team I've interacted with. People have a healthy work/life balance (40-50 hours a week), get paid very well (definitely abo…

> Disclaimer: I work for AWS, but my opinions are my own.

> I don't think you have much to worry about if you're a WF employee. Amazon actually treats their employees very well.

Normally when people say Amazon abuses their employees, they aren't talking about AWS.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#152

Post by tuna-piano » Fri, Jun 16, 2017, 1:59 PM UTC

tuna-piano wrote: post #92

I'm confused. Amazon is known to work backward from an imagined future press release, and then do the actions necessary to make that press release. How does Amazon see the future in this case? -Amazon already has PrimeNow and Amazon Fresh, which offer a great grocery delivery service. For those who have tried these services, it's easy to see how addicting they are vs going to a physical store. -I can't see Amazon usi…

One thought. People still like food and food things and being social, and the "farmers market" feeling. Even in a future which makes online grocery great for mundane shopping, people still need stuff to do.

Whole Foods already has bars, cafes, and restaurants. Maybe Whole Foods locations turn into places where people can hang out, try new things, and buy online grocery delivery (or pickup delivery as well)?

Who should be trembling in their sleep even more so with this news:

-Blue Apron, HelloFresh, Plated, etc

-Drizzly, alcohol delivery, etc (I think absolutely doomed)

-WalMart? (Maybe completely different customer sets)

-Target, Kroger, other grocery?

-Instacart (I think absolutely doomed)

Whole Foods is a large cafe/fast casual business. I assume competitors in that space aren't scared at all yet... but I would not necessarily sleep well if I were Starbucks or Chipotle. Amazon seems to play to win, and they usually win. Do they want to play is my main question.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#153

Post by lwlml » Fri, Jun 16, 2017, 1:59 PM UTC

Amazon is now (or more so now) like Evil Corp in the Mr. Robot kind of way. You can ship your Evil groceries via Evil Prime purchased via voice-command with your Evil assistant device paid for with your Evil credit-card. Evil.

Frankly I don't buy as much from WF anymore considering that what they carry is much more like "organic junk-food" than actual food.

If you really want to support the "cause", find yourself a local farmer or CSA to buy from and support them directly.

https://www.localharvest.org/csa/

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#154

Post by ajmurmann » Fri, Jun 16, 2017, 1:59 PM UTC

tuna-piano wrote: post #92

I'm confused. Amazon is known to work backward from an imagined future press release, and then do the actions necessary to make that press release. How does Amazon see the future in this case? -Amazon already has PrimeNow and Amazon Fresh, which offer a great grocery delivery service. For those who have tried these services, it's easy to see how addicting they are vs going to a physical store. -I can't see Amazon usi…

I think this is to bolster fresh and prime now. As far as I know Fresh is currently limited to very few areas. This might allow them to extend that. Prime Now in my areas has a very limited grocery selection from Amazon itself, but also delivers from a local chain that I see as a Whole Foods copy cat. This will allow them to drastically extend the groceries they make available themselves and get way more control over what's available.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#155

Post by Symbiote » Fri, Jun 16, 2017, 2:00 PM UTC

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.

Tesco use their supermarkets in the UK for collection of items ordered from their website, like home electronics.

I never used it, but I'm not really in Tesco's target market for non-food stuff.

https://www.tesco.com/direct/click-and-collect/

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#156

Post by neon_electro » Fri, Jun 16, 2017, 2:00 PM UTC

dx034 wrote: post #135

Accacin wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People have a healthy work/life balance (40-50 hours a week) 40-50 hours of work a week isn't healthy.

Why not? The important part is commute. 50hr work week in a job you like with a reasonable commute is no problem for your health. 30hr/week in a job you don't like with 2.5hr in traffic each day is much less healthy.

Says what research?

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#157

Post by ghaff » Fri, Jun 16, 2017, 2:01 PM UTC

tedmiston wrote: post #53

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #8

Aw, poor Blue Apron.

Blue Apron is not a good company relative to the other meal kit delivery services anyway. Their recipes are overly simplistic and their whole experience using UX dark patterns limiting which meals one can get in combination turned me off, and misleading people regarding cancellation. The higher quality meal kits like Home Chef won't have this problem because they give you, for about the same price, more complex recip…

I was in an urban organic-ish grocer last weekend and I saw they had meal kits. I'm surprised more places don't do this.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#158

Post by tuna-piano » Fri, Jun 16, 2017, 2:01 PM UTC

tuna-piano wrote: post #152

tuna-piano wrote: post #92

I'm confused. Amazon is known to work backward from an imagined future press release, and then do the actions necessary to make that press release. How does Amazon see the future in this case? -Amazon already has PrimeNow and Amazon Fresh, which offer a great grocery delivery service. For those who have tried these services, it's easy to see how addicting they are vs going to a physical store. -I can't see Amazon usi…

One thought. People still like food and food things and being social, and the "farmers market" feeling. Even in a future which makes online grocery great for mundane shopping, people still need stuff to do. Whole Foods already has bars, cafes, and restaurants. Maybe Whole Foods locations turn into places where people can hang out, try new things, and buy online grocery delivery (or pickup delivery as well)? Who shoul…

Or maybe Amazon sees its new checkout technology (that knows which items you buy automatically) as so special that it's better to roll it out at stores it owns than sell to existing retailers?

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#159

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Fri, Jun 16, 2017, 2:01 PM UTC

VT_Drew wrote: post #133

emodendroket wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says right in this article (and in others that have been published recently) that they were under pressure from investors.

Good old investors, so short sighted, they only care about the next 3 months. Whole Foods probably would have been better off as private company, especially with the culture they were trying to create.

> Good old investors, so short sighted, they only care about the next 3 months.

Yeah, darn those investors. How dare people with pensions, 401k's, IRAs, and other investments expect some kind of return on their investment? It's disgraceful. /s

EDIT: The sentiment against investors is rather ironic considering the amount of equity collectively held by HN readers.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#160

Post by zebrafish » Fri, Jun 16, 2017, 2:01 PM UTC

dawhizkid wrote: post #60

This is not good for Instacart. My understanding is WF was their biggest partner and source of revenue. No way amazon will use them.

Why? Instacart uses humans to pick inventory from a "warehouse" and deliver it to the buyer. Amazon needs people to pick and pack, they can't just use robots to store cereal boxes on the nearest shelf in the grocery store. I bet Instacart was a major reason why Amazon bought WF. Actually, didn't Apoorva work for Amazon before creating Instacart?