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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

#481

Post by emodendroket »

magic_beans wrote: post #426
tedmiston wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's awesome... I haven't really invested in good knives yet. My girlfriend who's been a daily cook for years can look at the meal kit recipes and find ways to parallelize or speed them up that aren't necessarily obvious, like boiling this water before you start prepping, or cooking a thing inside another already hot pan instead of a separate one. I think the directions prioritize easy before fast.

The Victorinox 8-inch Chef's knife is only $45 on Amazon (cheap for a good knife), and is really excellent for the home cook who's not yet ready to invest $200 on a fancy German or Japanese knife. It just needs a little sharpening after 2 weeks or so of daily use. It slices baguettes, onions, and raw meat like dream. I've even managed paper-thin slices of garlic!

I am always attracted to ceramic knives, although they have a tendency to chip.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#482

Post by clarkmoody »

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…

The difference is prices, as Mises showed in 1920.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#483

Post by cardiffspaceman »

ccorda wrote: post #106
maxerickson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that is right, Whole Foods stores are already full of...food. They don't have room for hundreds of additional products, never mind tens of thousands.

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.

These Amazon warehouses would be full of commingled, melamine-based fake food[1] that no one wants.

I personally also strongly dislike going to the Whole Foods stores in my area.

[1] Plausible scenario based on dozens of comments on HN

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#484

Post by deegles »

magic_beans wrote: post #384
marrone12 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I wonder how this is going to affect Blue Apron's upcoming IPO. My guess is for the worse.

I really don't undertand how companies like Blue Apron and Plated ever expected to be in business very long. Do they get many repeat customers? Theoretically a subscriber would actually learn to cook over time and then Blue Apron would lose that customer... I just don't understand the long term goal.

Churn through customers and VC capital until aquihire?

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#485

Post by chrisper »

nojvek wrote: post #320

I quite like wholefoods. Now that Amazon will own it I feel less likely to support it. Amazon is a cut throat profit making machine at the expense of human exploitation. Wholefoods felt like the little guy who was trying to do things differently from mainstream supermarkets.

By that reasoning you would also have to stop visiting any website that uses AWS.

I think that would mean you'd have to stop using the Internet entirely.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#486

Post by hosh »

pm90 wrote: post #349
toomuchtodo wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WF most likely will fail under Amazon (if WF must adapt to Amazon's business methods), opening the market for local competitors and similar national chains to absorb that market share. Great opportunity for Aldi on the low end and Trader Joe's on the high end. Groceries are not APIs.

I don't know. WF does have a very loyal base of users. Unless Amazon fucks with them majorly, I don't see it changing very much. In fact, with less pressure from activist investors to cut back on expenses, they might actually get more resources to experiment with new concepts. If money weren't a matter, I would love to shop at whole foods: shopping for groceries seems more of an experience there than at other places.…

Depends on the place. In Sedona, when Whole Foods bought the local alt grocer, people got upset at WF's corruption of the grocer's values.

When I airbnb'd in someone's Portland home once, The host worked for another local alr grocer chain, proudly telling me it is like WF but better.

Just a tangent: the downtown Seattle WF has a fantastic eatery ... and in the months before I moved, it turned into a major Amazon employer hangout, after the Amazon HQ moved there. Now I marvel at the irony it is effectively an externalized company cafeteria.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#487

Post by s73ver »

markshead wrote: post #434
sbarre wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those billions will the average employee get to see?

Is there any reason they would get a different amount per share than other shareholders? I'd assume it would only depend on how much stock they have obtained either by purchasing it from the market, using the stock purchase plan (where they can buy it for 85% of market price if they agreed to keep it for 2 years), or the stock-grants that were given to employees.

Well, for one, the employees are a huge part of why those shareholders get any returns in the first place.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#488

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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…

> Amazon actually treats their employees very well.

Do you mean the software developers who work on Lake Union or the many lower skilled people who work in Amazon's fulfillment centers...like people who would work in a grocery store...

> 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. That's a completely different environment than full time employees work in.

People who work at Wholefoods aren't software developers making top bucks.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#489

Post by SeeDave »

alanfalcon wrote: post #314
jasode wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Amazon acquisition of Zappos shoes is an indicator, Jeff Bezos let Tony Hsieh (CEO) continue to keep the culture. Hsieh said in past interviews that Bezos if fairly hands off. There was still some business "synergy" in the acquisition because Zappos logistics got integrated into the Amazon warehouse in Kentucky. Whether Bezos treats Whole Foods the same probably depends on whether he has confidence in existing man…

Zappos CS, front office, creative staff (etc.) got to keep their culture. Zappos warehouse workers got shafted.

Would it be possible to expound on this comment with a decent source (first party is totally okay!)?

I ask not as a personal attack on your credibility, this comment just seems a bit inconsistent with the Holacracy movement that he championed a couple of years back.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#490

Post by euyyn »

_jal wrote: post #449
vnchr wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting comparison. In this case, people aren't unionizing for essentially the opposite reason. Rather than state provided social welfare, their needs are satisfied through this capitalistic solution. Employees are empowered and rewarded through their work.

It is important to note that the antagonism between union and management is especially bad in the U.S. Germany demonstrates one arrangement that generally works to align the interests of the two. Just calling this out to try to counter the tendency of U.S. folks to assume that there is only one, unchanging form of capitalism. In fact, ours is increasingly a weird outlier.

What is that arrangement? How are their interests aligned?
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