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Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

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Re: Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

#81

Post by iamleppert »

vkou wrote: post #63
iamleppert wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't fit in an hour every weekend to go get food, that's cheaper and better quality than a grocery store to feed you and your family?

An hour of a software engineer's time is worth ~$30-50. At least, many of them happily pay that much for someone to do an hour's worth of chores for them. Unless you're buying industrial quantities of food, I doubt a trip to the farmer's market will save you $40. The quality difference is also difficult to quantify. Onions and potatoes from the farmer's market aren't any healthier then onions from the supermarket. An…

Oh there we go with the "my time is worth $50/hr" thing.

By that kind of reasoning, how much money can you save by reducing how much time you sleep by an hour each night?

Or maybe if I add 10 people to your project you'll get it done 10x faster?

Re: Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

#82

Post by iamleppert »

qudat wrote: post #75
iamleppert wrote: post #30

People here are smart enough to realize what this is: a publicity stunt. Even if you have money, shopping at Whole Foods is foolish. Amazon reduced a fraction of the items prices, they are still heavily over-priced, and the food quality for the price is low. Whole Foods is a grocery store that prices it's food high to attract a certain type of consumer. That's all. If you want high quality food, I encourage you to vi…

I'm pretty confused by this post. I shop at whole foods regularly and while their prices are high, their product is usually much better than the other stores I visit (kroger, meijer). I also do not get the "shop at a farmers market exclusively" line of reasoning. We don't have access to farmer's markets in the winter. That's not really a highly available thing where I live (Michigan). Even when it's summer we still d…

I never said farmers markets are the one solution. I do think locally produced food and direct to consumer food could be a solution. It's better to deal locally whenever possible. And contrary to popular belief, local food is very possible to scale and do so efficiently.

Because everyone here seems to only understand the world through software engineer terms, I'll break it down for you: a distributed system is often very efficient and scalable solution to a supply and demand problem.

Re: Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

#83

Post by flachsechs »

iamleppert wrote: post #64
flachsechs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

either those people can't afford locally produced food, or the farmers can't afford to do it at the prices they'd demand. people need affordable supermarkets. this isn't complicated, it's unfortunately just not very profitable to serve these people.

Every local farmers market I've been to has been less expensive than a grocery store. I literally come away with enough food for the week at half the cost of the grocery store produce (Safeway for me). Whole Foods? Probably 1/4th the cost. Really, truly what I'm saying is true. For people who don't even have a grocery store, I think things like community gardens (a garden that is shared between a block of neighbors)…

you are seriously out of touch with what life is like in a place so impoverished it can't even sustain a good grocery store.

Re: Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

#84

Post by vkou »

iamleppert wrote: post #81
vkou wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An hour of a software engineer's time is worth ~$30-50. At least, many of them happily pay that much for someone to do an hour's worth of chores for them. Unless you're buying industrial quantities of food, I doubt a trip to the farmer's market will save you $40. The quality difference is also difficult to quantify. Onions and potatoes from the farmer's market aren't any healthier then onions from the supermarket. An…

Oh there we go with the "my time is worth $50/hr" thing. By that kind of reasoning, how much money can you save by reducing how much time you sleep by an hour each night? Or maybe if I add 10 people to your project you'll get it done 10x faster?

I get paid a lot more then $30-50/hr. I discounted my rate for time I'm not at work.

After a point, I will absolutely pay $30 to not lose another hour of sleep.

Either way, you're missing the point. Time is money. People spend money to save time, and people spend time to save money. Different people have a different rate at which they'll strongly consider doing one over the other.

For most of us, the amount of money we have is very limited. For all of us, the amount of time we have is very limited. Eventually, we'll all be dead.

Re: Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

#85

Post by sumoboy »

emodendroket wrote: post #9
sumoboy wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon buys this companies and they never really seem to work out over time, eg. zappos, diapers. Major grocery chains will just get smarter and more aggressive with pricing.

I was not aware Zappos was not considered a success.

Zappos is a huge success for customer service and returns, but they've been losing marketshare for years. Amazon just wants to show high revenue numbers and mask operating losses. Don't think that Walmart with acquisition of shoebuy is going to sit around and not steal revenue. Too many people think if Amazon buys a company it's going to turn into gold, the only thing that is goldmine is AWS. Whole Foods won't be immune from stiff competition going forward, everybody knows there brand is expensive regardless if they drop prices 25%.

Re: Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

#87

Post by tinfins »

vkou wrote: post #69
tinfins wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all - the price cuts were to staples like salmon, avocados, ground beef, milk, eggs, bananas, etc...

Any price cuts on bread, pork, sausage, potatoes, tilapia, tomatoes, onions, leeks, beets, rice, beans? From the '49 discounts' link in this thread, the answer seems to be 'no'.

Vine-ripened tomatoes were cut by $1/lb at my store (from $2.99 to $1.99). The bulk rices all dropped, but I don't remember by how much.

Canned beans were already pretty competitive, don't think any dried ones changed. No change on onions, leeks, beets, pork, or bread that I noticed. Tilapia went down by a couple bucks a pound.

Re: Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

#88

Post by tinfins »

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #24
tinfins wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all - the price cuts were to staples like salmon, avocados, ground beef, milk, eggs, bananas, etc...

What about Arugula? That's a staple... I used to shop at Whole Foods regularly back when they were Fresh Fields in the mid to late 90s. Now I find them just too expensive. Maybe it's just me, because back then, I was feeding a couple of toddlers and now I'm feeding several large eating machines.

Yeah, I think one of the plastic containers of arugula was $.50 cheaper. But it's the organic one, so it depends on whether you normally buy that kind.

Re: Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

#90

Post by honestlyreally »

taurath wrote: post #76
zaphos wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How close are they to having fixed price, for you, after the recent price cuts?

I haven't been yet, because my habits right now exist around not going to whole foods. They've achieved a willingness for me to try them out again though - probably the next time the Fred Meyer near me is out of english muffins (3rd time in 3 weeks yesterday!) I'll try it out. Having seen some of the price cuts online it doesn't seem like a whole lot, but if the staples like eggs and veggies/fruit are actually coming…

Shouldnt all fresh food be of variable market price?

Seems quite evironmentally unfriendly to subside out of season food solely to appease picky customers.

Eating local in-season food should be promoted by market mechanisms.

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