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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

#241

Post by ghaff »

ccorda wrote: post #162
ghaff wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fair enough. Being able to swing by a store and pickup a pre picked order at a specific time probably has value for some. So likely does not having to drag kids around a store.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#243

Post by Chaebixi »

emodendroket wrote: post #32
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.

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).

> 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).

...or monomania of "the [stock] market," and the myopia of those who look to it to determine what "works."

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#244

Post by nissimk »

dx034 wrote: post #178
lwlml wrote: post #153

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 l…

They don't offer bank accounts yet. Only then Mr Robot could come and change the world by hacking them /s

Credit accounts + gift card balances is almost the same thing.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#245

Post by zebrafish »

tuna-piano wrote: post #205
zebrafish wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I would definitely guess not. Why would Amazon pick and pack from a retail store and not a distribution center? And what does Instacart bring to the table? Amazon already has a website and seems to have no trouble building gigantic on-demand workforces. What else does Instacart have? I would guess close to 100% of Instacart users already use Amazon for things as well. I don't see things ending up well for Instacart a…

I'm thinking that the grocery store would be the distribution center. I don't know what their transportation lanes look like but most produce just goes from the field to the grocery store. If you're already storing it there, why put it in a distro center when these stores are in the same locations.

Instacart brings a userbase. Heck, maybe Amazon just buys Instacart as well.

Not sure if amazon's FCs are currently equipped to store produce and milk and other things like that. Just seems like they can take advantage of existing supply chains and synergies if they embrace Instacart.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#246

Post by michaelbuckbee »

_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…

Probably best to look at Zappos, Woot and other past acquisitions.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#247

Post by G2kyd7 »

pjc50 wrote: post #48
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).

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?

Due to the intense competition in Germany, companies such as ALDI and Lidl are far more efficient than grocery stores in other countries, particularly the UK and US. Walmart tried to enter the German market years ago and was sent packing shortly after. The reason why the German stores are expanding is because there is very little profit to be made in Germany, whereas in other countries margins are much higher in supermarkets.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#248

Post by uji »

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 don't think this is completely true. I was with AWS for 3 years as SW engineer and was working around 12 hours until I decided to switch. AWS has pretty messed up softwar services with lot of technical debt. Rather than fixing these, AWS relies on oncall (pager duty) to mitigate production issues. My team use to get 200 pages a week.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#250

Post by djur »

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…

It's somewhat dated, but Galbraith's _The New Industrial State_ has a lot of interesting insight into the role of large corporations in economic planning. People sometimes criticize the book because the large corporations (GM, GE, etc.) the book talks about are less central to the economy now, but I don't think that contradicts the book's message at all.
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