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.
Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
161–170 of 865 posts
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#162Earlier 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 $$ on delivery.
Not for me either, but not everyone wants or can have groceries and/or packages sitting on their porch all day.
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Place an order by noon for groceries plus anything you want from Amazon. Amazon fills up truck(s) at whatehouse and drops off at local Whole Foods. Stop by on your way home from work and they bring your items to your car. You get free same day delivery. Amazon just greatly saved on last mile delivery costs. That's the value of those nodes without having to store all the inventory.
Hannafords has a place an order and pick it up model. Anecdotally, based on my local store, hardly anyone uses it. I suspect it's a narrow niche where people are happy to order on their computer but want to save a few $$ on delivery.
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#164Somewhat 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.
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
#165Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#166Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#167Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#168Earlier 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.
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
#169Checkmate, brick and mortar!! Amazon is eating the world.
Well...isn't Whole Foods brick and mortar?
and, i should add, kroger and supervalu and etc will be struggling dinosaurs like sears