Full disclosure, I like using the free, L2 chargers at Whole Foods. However, I don't see this being a good match for the Whole Foods culture. Granted Whole Foods sure has a high ratio of employees to customers, their staff is always helpful. Unlike some places whose initials are Walmart, the Whole Foods staff act as if they are there to make the customer experience successful. Bob Wilson
it will be interesting. my wife does whole foods, trader joes, wegmans and the local supermarket. sometimes for price, sometimes quality, and sometimes specialty items the others don't have. maybe i'm naive, but amazon is so good at what they do, it's hard to see them screwing this up.
But you don't get to interact with an Amazon employee. Are they treated like Uber drivers? Are they thinking of joining a union? In contrast, you almost have to shoo the Whole Foods employees out of the way. . . . along with the occasional fruit fly. Bob Wilson
aren't they already operating book and grocery stores? i suppose the checkouts will eventually go away. and online ordering will be instituted, amongst various other hi tech changes. will customer service suffer? of course it's possible. i'm not ready to condemn yet, but perhaps i'm naive. and i'm also upset that they changed their free charger to card required.
I am assuming that the purchase of Whole Foods is more a real estate grab than a grocery grab. Whole foods has over 400 locations, most of which are in Amazon-friendly territory (ubran/upscale suburban areas). Those locations will buttress the move into grocery while establishing local distribution hubs for other merchandise. The Whole Foods clientele, in my opinion, is a good fit for Amazon. The locations are priceless. It would take years to build out such a footprint.
I agree that Whole Foods is a nice bit of real estate to capture. Just I've been through a couple of corporate 'take overs' and seen what can happen to the corporate culture. One I agreed was GE Space Division which was so screwed up, their takeover by Lockheed-Martin looked like a 'poison pill'. But the other, SAIC going from employee owned to 'public', has not gone well. It has to do with a corporate culture that has gone from collaborative to competitive down to the smallest units. Bob Wilson
they put in a fancy digital dual hvse charging station. nice, compared to the single ge they had. but now you have to sign up for charge point. i don't know if there is a cost involved. for me, it was a convenience once in awhile, but it's not worth signing up, when that's the only convenient public charger around.
Ok, that makes sense. There has been some early adopters of EVSE products who have dropped their products and there are no parts or maintenance when they break. The GE units look a little 'long on the tooth' to me too. Thanks, Bob Wilson
I expect the vertical distribution from suppliers to the brick and mortar WF locations AND to Amazon online selling to become even more tight and robust. Greater volume (and turns) plus economies of scale could reduce the already too high WF retail location prices down a notch. More of their private label 365 products becoming the norm could cut prices further. WF has been losing ground for too many quarters in a row due to the perceived price of everything they sell. The new owner will seek to reverse that trend and perception as fast as possible. And they'll probably accomplish this in a hurry. Then there's the Amazon Prime membership pricing possibilities. Let's say they take Prime memberships at physical locations at checkout. How about another 5% off your qualified 365 (and maybe all products?) when you pay with a Prime membership card? Very possible. How about rewards online for most Amazon products, including food, based on buying $X volume at WF? Or even the other way around. Bezos is going to leverage that $100 Prime membership fee for WF as well. Like COSTCO, most everyone will want to become a member to gain the rewards based on purchases. At the food store I work at, one out of three cards put in the readers are COSTCO Visa cards. That tells me how deep cross purchasing discounts run for food. That gets them 1% back from COSTCO. What if Prime membership gets WF customers something like 5% at their own stores? And you could use that 5% rebate for web purchases at Amazon?
I'm more of an Aldi kinda guy than "Whole Paycheck" although I regularly stop by the WF in Brentwood when I pass through just because.....it's a good place to pump bilges and get some geedunk. As far as employee interactions, I don't need some gauged and sleeved hipster gushing on about whether or not I've heard about the latest uses for hemp oil or coconut paste. Just stock the shelves and keep the food areas and restrooms clean and we're good. Self checkout? Even better! I guess that's what I get for being so approachable. I heard that the Walmart might be bidding up the street price for WF, probably more as a salting the earth kinda thing than any serious bid for the company. Interestingly enough, Kroger is moving towards the WF model with it's newer locations, but I think that both WF and Kroger are going to be crushed eventually beneath the wheels of WalMart's "Neighborhood Markets" and the Zon's ability to do next day delivery of anything that doesn't have to be refrigerated or thumped with an index finger. Once you get outside places where one-percenters hang......which by my math is nearly everywhere, then people are more price sensitive, and stores like WF will continue to eke out a living, as will places like Aldi and Lidl on the other end of the spectrum. WalMart and Amazon however will continue to dominate, with Amazon wanting to be where Walmart is on the grocery end of the biz and vice versa for the deliverables.
the whole foods in orlando has a beer and wine bar, which i found interesting. nothing like that around here, probably illegal.
Ours combined it with two of the 'stone' ovens that remind me of a Mork spaceship: However, they will make a pizza to order with whatever you've bought in the store. For example: shiitake and prosciutto (my custom order) kale and <anything> (treat it like carp in a brown paper bag but popular with others) Bob Wilson
Source: The Locavore Hunter™: How to Cook Carp & River Chub . . . a new fisherman asks the older fisherman for a good carp recipe, the older fisherman responds with something to the effect of this: "Take a nice thick carp filet and place it on a piece of cardboard. Cover it on both sides with melted butter and scatter it with carmelized onions. Sprinkle the carp with plenty of salt and pepper. Bake it in the oven for 25 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove it from the oven, throw away the carp, and eat the cardboard." Source: The Big Apple: “Throw away the fish, eat the plank” (joke) WARNING: do not have a beverage while reading! Bob Wilson
