Live data from Hacker News

Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

bloomberg.com

161–170 of 865 posts

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#161
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Treating them above market or not, Amazon acquired the company for billions and not because Whole Foods was doing badly.

How many of those billions will the average employee get to see?

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#162
post #138
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Place an order by noon for groceries plus anything you want from Amazon. Amazon fills up truck(s) at whatehouse and drops off at local Whole Foods. Stop by on your way home from work and they bring your items to your car. You get free same day delivery. Amazon just greatly saved on last mile delivery costs. That's the value of those nodes without having to store all the inventory.

Hannafords has a place an order and pick it up model. Anecdotally, based on my local store, hardly anyone uses it. I suspect it's a narrow niche where people are happy to order on their computer but want to save a few $$ on delivery.

Amazon has it on trial already: https://www.amazon.com/afx/nc/aboutpickup

Not for me either, but not everyone wants or can have groceries and/or packages sitting on their porch all day.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#163
post #138
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Place an order by noon for groceries plus anything you want from Amazon. Amazon fills up truck(s) at whatehouse and drops off at local Whole Foods. Stop by on your way home from work and they bring your items to your car. You get free same day delivery. Amazon just greatly saved on last mile delivery costs. That's the value of those nodes without having to store all the inventory.

Hannafords has a place an order and pick it up model. Anecdotally, based on my local store, hardly anyone uses it. I suspect it's a narrow niche where people are happy to order on their computer but want to save a few $$ on delivery.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#164
post #97
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…

No one has given more disposable income to poor people than Wal-Mart and Amazon. It just hasn't come in the form of wages.

To your first statement, is this even true of Amazon?

In the US, Amazon Prime has something like 80% penetration into households making >= $100k/year. This move into Whole Foods reaffirms this focus on high-income households, where convenience is often as large a factor as costs.

My hunch is that Amazon has been a massive positive in aggregate, but poor households have been negatively impacted by Amazon, taking into account loss of jobs, lowering of wages, and some positive lower costs for goods.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#166
You know the race for global trade dominance is heating up and playing out regionally when the same company tries to buy Slack and Whole Foods in the same week. While one is familiar with conglomerates holding a diverse array of businesses, it's fascinating and slightly unnerving (in terms of market power increasingly concentrated in fewer hands) to see it in motion.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#168
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Place an order by noon for groceries plus anything you want from Amazon. Amazon fills up truck(s) at whatehouse and drops off at local Whole Foods. Stop by on your way home from work and they bring your items to your car. You get free same day delivery. Amazon just greatly saved on last mile delivery costs. That's the value of those nodes without having to store all the inventory.

I'm closer to Whole Foods' nearest distribution center than an actual Whole Foods. The nearest Whole Foods is almost 40 miles away. If this works out for Amazon, I wouldn't be surprised to see Walmart try and buy Trader Joe's. They own Aldi, which has made a big push to compete with Walmart's reach outside cities. The nearest Aldi is closer than Walmart, and that's already not far away.

You've got your Aldis mixed up. Aldi Nord owns Trader Joe's (not the other way around). Aldi stores in the US are Aldi Süd. The two are separate companies, Aldi Nord serves the North of Germany and Aldi Süd the South. Their international expansions are separate as well. Here's a handy map (Aldi Nord in blue): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Aldi_wor...

The line dividing Germany into Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd territory — https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Aldi_equ... — is called the "Aldi equator". We sometimes jokingly call it Germany's most important dividing line post-reunification :)

tl;dr Aldi and Trader Joe's are (theoretically) in competition, and neither owns the other. The other Aldi owns Trader Joe's.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#169
post #27

Checkmate, brick and mortar!! Amazon is eating the world.

Well...isn't Whole Foods brick and mortar?

In 10 years, Whole Foods will not have retail locations, and its distribution network will have shifted to 100% online orders ;)

and, i should add, kroger and supervalu and etc will be struggling dinosaurs like sears

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#170
post #6

Better buy than Slack for $9B.

Thats some good perspective - to think that slack is worth more than WF is nuts. I ove both, but I can't imagine how slack is worth 2B more than WF... pretty amazing.

with software, you profit more if you do it right because you need less overhead
Post reply on HN