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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

#191

Post by lorenzhs »

dx034 wrote: post #104
pjc50 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aldi/Lidl have really taken over in the UK in the last 10 years. I'm not really sure how they manage it - more, smaller stores?

Small stores, mostly own labels and fewer employees. They buy only packages that don't need unpacking, saving a lot of time getting products on the shelf. Employees work all positions in the store so that shelves are filled when it's less busy and everyone is at the checkout when needed. That way no employee is idle, saving salaries. In the UK they also profit from their European footprint. If you go somewhere else i…

They also have barcodes on just about every side of the packaging. The cashiers don't have to figure out which side is the one with the barcode, they can just slide it across the scanner in whichever orientation it's on the belt. This makes checkout super efficient.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#192

Post by jerrylives »

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…

>I know that there are some stories about bad experiences in the fulfillment centers, but keep in mind that those positions are temporary seasonal work by unskilled labor

But keep in mind poor non-tech people are trash and you can treat them like it!

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#193

Post by aerovistae »

tmaly wrote: post #134

Grocery stores are a tough market with razor thin margins. Whole Foods has a ton of competitors like Trader Joes that happens to still have organic options. Since I did not see it asked, any idea if we will see some new Prime benefit at Wholefoods?

Out of curiosity, what's your insight into grocery store profit margins? Were you an exec at a grocery chain, or something giving a similar window into their numbers?

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#194

Post by kesselvon »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #159
VT_Drew wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

short-term boosterism is the cause of more than a few problems in our economic system

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#195

Post by alphonsegaston »

bflesch wrote: post #174
_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 should be noted that amazon employees also "get paid pretty darn well with some crazy good benefits" and the whole IT at amazon is union free. I feel like this is a great fit, with whole foods being a progressive company in US grocery space.

No one is arguing that the people who work on Whole Food's website are going to suffer a significant drop in the quality of their work experience.

It's a fair supposition, however, that Whole Food's front line staff (who map to the warehouse employees that Amazon absolutely treats like garbage) probably will.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#196

Post by shiftpgdn »

tedmiston wrote: post #120
emodendroket wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt the opposite way; the recipes I got when I tried Blue Apron were more trouble than I really wanted to bother with on a weeknight.

Yeah, I can relate. I probably cook 3 meal kits every 2 weeks when I'm doing them which is on/off, and I feel like it is a time commitment (especially cleanup). So, I could commit 30-45 minutes and get a Blue Apron level meal that's usually ~5/10 experience or commit 15 more minutes to get something really nice one that's ~9/10.

Practice and sharp knives will dramatically change how quickly you can prep, cook, serve and cleanup a blue apron or plated meal. I can usually beat the estimated time by 10+ minutes.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#197

Post by RobAley »

Symbiote wrote: post #155
maxerickson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

I've used it a couple of times (for School uniform for my kids, cheaper than Amazon), however Amazon have their pickup lockers closer to where I live, and with no (slow) human interaction (as at Tesco), it's normally a winner for me.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#198

Post by TomSawyer »

izacus wrote: post #77
AndrewDucker wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hmm, as I remember the socialist governments were replaced (not easily, but they were). Have we even seen a conglomerate of AMZN size replaced in living memory?

Not if you were born recently.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#199

Post by DiNovi »

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.

well, he was pressured by his board to sell, so, not the most successful.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#200

Post by kesselvon »

emodendroket wrote: post #66
illumin8 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I know that there are some stories about bad experiences in the fulfillment centers, but keep in mind that those positions are temporary seasonal work by unskilled labor. That's a completely different environment than full time employees work in. But probably more similar to most jobs in a grocery store than a software engineering position.

I mean keeping an ambulance outside the doors to a warehouse because its cheaper than cooling it is a tad inhumane.
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