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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

#231

Post by j2bax »

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.

This might be one of the more tone deaf things I've read on HN in recent memory.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#232

Post by ghaff »

maxerickson wrote: post #171
rainbowmverse wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Walmart has ~4500 (US) stores already. Aldi is expanding rapidly but has far fewer than that. The two Aldi locations I drive past are both located less than a mile from the nearest Walmart locations (I expect they do a fair amount of piggybacking). The purchase doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me. I guess the most sensible thing is that they see the stores being located by the best populations to start out doin…

The premium of rapid delivery was a sticking point going back to the dot bomb era. A lot of people want rapid delivery (though admittedly only a subset want to order groceries online). But it's a premium service and a whole lot fewer want to pay for it.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#233

Post by bkjelden »

_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…

I would recommend anyone wanting to learn more about John Mackey, and how he built Whole Foods, to listen to a recent episode of the How I Built This podcast featuring him: http://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=527979061:528000104

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#234

Post by webXL »

ckastner wrote: post #65
AndrewDucker wrote: post #23

https://twitter.com/dkberman/status/875701677504024576 "Amazon did not just buy Whole Foods grocery stores. It bought 431 upper-income, prime-location distribution nodes for everything it does."

$13.7B / 431 = $31.79m per store. I have zero experience with real estate prices for retail outlets, but it feels as if that's a bit on the high end?

That's an interesting way to view it. Apple's incredible revenue/profit per sq.ft. statistic comes to mind. This isn't a real estate investment. They're buying capital to increase profits. But it's Amazon, so don't hold your breath.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#235

Post by tedmiston »

ghaff wrote: post #157
tedmiston wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blue Apron is not a good company relative to the other meal kit delivery services anyway. Their recipes are overly simplistic and their whole experience using UX dark patterns limiting which meals one can get in combination turned me off, and misleading people regarding cancellation. The higher quality meal kits like Home Chef won't have this problem because they give you, for about the same price, more complex recip…

I was in an urban organic-ish grocer last weekend and I saw they had meal kits. I'm surprised more places don't do this.

Kroger, which is probably the biggest grocery chain accounting for all of the chains under their umbrella, just started rolling out their own last month. Their price point is $14–18 for two, or just under the price of meal kit delivery services but probably still with better margins given their supply chain. I haven't tried them yet but I plan to.

http://www.produceretailer.com/article/videos-article/watch-...

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#236

Post by creepydata »

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.

>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.

Another example of this is Wegmans -

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/could-this-be-the-best-company-i...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/13/why-w...

http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/why-do-so-many-people-...

http://m.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Bite/2016/0225/Why-is-We...

“Our employees are our number one asset, period,” Kevin Stickles, the company’s vice president for human resources, told Reuters in 2012. “The first question you ask is: ‘Is this the best thing for the employee?’ That’s a totally different model.”

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#237

Post by mayneack »

_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…

> If you don't know, John Mackey, the CEO / founder, is a major believer in conscious capitalism and of empowering his employees.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/16/whole-foods-ceo-oba...

> “It’s more like fascism,” Mackey recently told NPR. “In fascism, the government doesn’t own the means of production, but they do control it — and that’s what’s happening with our health care programs and these reforms.”

> Mackey, a libertarian, compared Obamacare to “socialism” in a Wall Street Journal op-ed he penned in 2009. Obamacare would “move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system,” he proclaimed.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#238

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

indolering wrote: post #52
_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…

> Here comes store automation and hefty lay-offs? ... or just expand and move people to new stores. Seriously, what's the yearly turnover for front-line positions?

I worked for Palo Alto Whole Foods from 2008-2011, and I think one thing that really hurt the company was that they aggressively overexpanded.

Does Santa Cruz need two stores (Capitola is practically Santa Cruz)? A Blossom Hill store? Competing with Los Gatos and Campbell?

At the time (I was s cashier) WF culture was dead set against self checkout stands, because they really wanted someone to be there to help customers.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#239

Post by chadgeidel »

tuna-piano wrote: post #92

I'm confused. Amazon is known to work backward from an imagined future press release, and then do the actions necessary to make that press release. How does Amazon see the future in this case? -Amazon already has PrimeNow and Amazon Fresh, which offer a great grocery delivery service. For those who have tried these services, it's easy to see how addicting they are vs going to a physical store. -I can't see Amazon usi…

Amazon Fresh isn't in all markets, and - as other commenters have noted - Whole Foods is a convenient "last-mile distribution center" for food. That, along with the automatic check-out stores that Amazon has been demoing dovetail pretty nicely with their goals.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#240

Post by colanderman »

rainbowmverse wrote: post #141
ccorda wrote: post #106

Earlier 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.

Trader Joe's is owned by Aldi Nord; Aldi US is owned by Aldi Süd. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi#Geographic_distribution
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