Maybe their plan is to fly everyone via drone to the nearest Whole Foods store.
Drone ride free if you fill a shopping cart.
Good article at Slate:
“Whole Foods may well be about to become Amazon’s second user interface.”
But I don’t want to. Figure out how to deliver my groceries, assholes.
Wow… I live in walking distance of a Whole Foods. I would love it if that became a brick-and-mortar Amazon interface. If it means bypassing the USPS for the last mile, that would suit me just fine.
I can’t see how that happens without fucking up the entire Whole Foods experience. Where do you store packages for pickup? How bad is that parking lot/traffic going to be if you’ve got grocery customers and package customers?
On the flip side of Amazon buying Whole Foods, Walmart is buying Bonobos for $310 million.
For those unfamiliar, Bonobos is a men’s fashion retailer. Walmert recently bought Jet and ModCloth, so this is part of their expansion into the online space.
Here in NYC Amazon has delivery lockers in various stores, usually bodegas or 7-11s. You walk in, input your code on a little touchscreen, the locker opens, and you get your package. Worked fine back when I didn’t have a doorman.
Anyone picking up a package will be in and out in 5 minutes, so I doubt parking will be a problem. And if they aren’t out in 5 minutes that means they’re buying something else, which makes Amazon happy too.
Yeah, we have those lockers too, but they’re outside of Safeways and in convience stores.
Amazon didn’t need Whole Foods to expand their locker presence.
Holy cow. I’m wearing a Bonobos shirt now. Where i live my men’s wear selection, barring online purchases is, literally:
Jo.A Banks
Dillards
Academy Sports
And most shirts at Banks are not fitted, and Dillards has stacks of Gold Label house brand from 1985 they’re still pawning off at exorbitant prices, right next to the endless Polos. Polo leather wallets for $150 dollars, that sort of thing. I may as well wear fishing shirts all day. At least the unofficial Texas dress code is boots and jeans with a dress shirt, so it could be worse. Only lawyers wear full suits out here, and Ariats are pretty comfortable.
Jeff Lewis @ChicagoPhotoSho
Bezos: “Alexa, buy me something from Whole Foods”
Alexa: “Buying Whole Foods”
Bezos: Shit
You know, I try to be positive about Amazon. I mean I’m a customer (who isn’t) and I have friends that work there but deep down, Amazon creeps me the hell out. It’s like a big Katamari rolling all over the earth and pretty soon we’re all just going to be part of Amazon.
That’s pretty much how things seem in the downtown Seattle real estate market, too.
Oh you don’t have to tell me dude, I work in South Lake Union. It’s a rat’s nest.
Let me know if you find yourself absorbed into the very walls of their ever-expanding campuses. I’m a dozen or so blocks south, and would appreciate a heads-up if I need to escape on foot.
A number of observers have said that Amazon is by far the most interesting and innovative company today. Bezos is probably the top tech CEO, by far.
It’s interesting to think if Jobs had had the damn surgery when they first detected his tumor rather than him trying to do it naturally, then he’d probably still be alive. Imagine what he could have done with Apple for another decade. Instead, Apple seems to have just settled in to doing more of the same.
But much like the assimilated humans from The Thing, I must ask myself would I know if I had been taken over? Would I even know that I had become Amazon or would I be a husk, just a thing that looks like me, sounds like me, but living solely by the will of Bezos?
I think the only solution may be to periodically check and see how your blood reacts to fire.
I guess the “Whole Paycheck” joke will have a different meaning after this.
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2295514
Starting Monday, Whole Foods Market will offer lower prices on a selection of best-selling staples across its stores, with much more to come. Customers will enjoy lower prices on products like Whole Trade bananas, organic avocados, organic large brown eggs, organic responsibly-farmed salmon and tilapia, organic baby kale and baby lettuce, animal-welfare-rated 85% lean ground beef, creamy and crunchy almond butter, organic Gala and Fuji apples, organic rotisserie chicken, 365 Everyday Value organic butter, and much more.
In the future, after certain technical integration work is complete, Amazon Prime will become Whole Foods Market’s customer rewards program, providing Prime members with special savings and other in-store benefits.
Whole Foods Market’s healthy and high-quality private label products—including 365 Everyday Value, Whole Foods Market, Whole Paws and Whole Catch—will be available through Amazon, AmazonFresh, Prime Pantry and Prime Now.
Amazon Lockers will be available in select Whole Foods Market stores. Customers can have products shipped from Amazon to their local Whole Foods Market store for pick up or send returns back to Amazon during a trip to the store.