Amazon to open grocery chain separate from Whole Foods
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Amazon to open grocery chain separate from Whole Foods
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Re: Amazon to open grocery chain separate from Whole Foods
#2Does your business 1) work in retail and 2) have more than 2% margin?
Then Amazon is coming for you.
Re: Amazon to open grocery chain separate from Whole Foods
#3Smart move. Whole Foods has a limited appeal. It's not just price - sometimes people want to buy Cheetos or pizza rolls that don't taste like cardboard.
Slightly related thought: Why not design a store which allows instant fulfillment from a wide selection of goods while taking up less ground level space? I could see an Amazon/Walmart/etc store where you reserve the shelf space for presentation, but the goods are actually stored on higher floors and delivered to the customer upon checkout? Real-estate is a premium in many markets and probably keeps out super-center style stores. If you could build up, without having to extend retail niceties to all floors, you might make the costs work.
Re: Amazon to open grocery chain separate from Whole Foods
#4Does your business 1) work in retail and 2) have more than 2% margin? Then Amazon is coming for you.
@GSElevator: "If Amazon is in your line of business: Sell now. If Amazon is not in your line of business: Sell now; your business sucks"
Re: Amazon to open grocery chain separate from Whole Foods
#5Smart move. Whole Foods has a limited appeal. It's not just price - sometimes people want to buy Cheetos or pizza rolls that don't taste like cardboard. Slightly related thought: Why not design a store which allows instant fulfillment from a wide selection of goods while taking up less ground level space? I could see an Amazon/Walmart/etc store where you reserve the shelf space for presentation, but the goods are act…
Yes, I imagine a store in which you just walk around and scan QR codes on your phone and your bagged groceries are waiting for you when you walk out (all paid for on the app, too, so no checkout).
Re: Amazon to open grocery chain separate from Whole Foods
#6Does your business 1) work in retail and 2) have more than 2% margin? Then Amazon is coming for you.
I'm actually cautiously optomistic for some stores. For example, I still go to Target since I want to see clothes before I buy them. And their store card gives you free 2 day shipping with no BS "membership fee".
I could see AMZN taking a huge dive if the economy slows down. Think about it - a lot of people will be looking for things to cut and that Prime membership may be the first to go.
Re: Amazon to open grocery chain separate from Whole Foods
#7Smart move. Whole Foods has a limited appeal. It's not just price - sometimes people want to buy Cheetos or pizza rolls that don't taste like cardboard. Slightly related thought: Why not design a store which allows instant fulfillment from a wide selection of goods while taking up less ground level space? I could see an Amazon/Walmart/etc store where you reserve the shelf space for presentation, but the goods are act…
Argos in the UK works this way. It is slow.
Re: Amazon to open grocery chain separate from Whole Foods
#8Smart move. Whole Foods has a limited appeal. It's not just price - sometimes people want to buy Cheetos or pizza rolls that don't taste like cardboard. Slightly related thought: Why not design a store which allows instant fulfillment from a wide selection of goods while taking up less ground level space? I could see an Amazon/Walmart/etc store where you reserve the shelf space for presentation, but the goods are act…
That might work. I envision something close to Ikea (but in a much smaller footprint) where product collection is batched at the end of the store route. In fact, surely they (Ikea) have tossed this idea around. Probably encountered some roadblocks due to the size and weight of some of their furniture offerings. And how about insincere actors who just want to make some heavy furniture fly around the store?
Re: Amazon to open grocery chain separate from Whole Foods
#9Smart move. Whole Foods has a limited appeal. It's not just price - sometimes people want to buy Cheetos or pizza rolls that don't taste like cardboard. Slightly related thought: Why not design a store which allows instant fulfillment from a wide selection of goods while taking up less ground level space? I could see an Amazon/Walmart/etc store where you reserve the shelf space for presentation, but the goods are act…
Yes, I imagine a store in which you just walk around and scan QR codes on your phone and your bagged groceries are waiting for you when you walk out (all paid for on the app, too, so no checkout).
Until people put things in their bag/cart that they didn't scan the code for, and you're not going to RFID tag an entire grocery store inventory that already has razor thin margins.
Supposedly Amazon's machine-vision store is solving this though.
Re: Amazon to open grocery chain separate from Whole Foods
#10I think the average Whole Foods has plenty of wasted space and that they could easily start to carry products that the average consumer has to go to a normal grocery/convenience store to buy (liquor, snacks, candy, soda, beauty etc). I don't think it will diminish from the experience. Plenty of higher end grocery stores do the same, even with a smaller footprint.