![]() With Go, Amazon can now tackle Whole Foods’ biggest issue for most people: price. It's hugely convenient, and it will happen. Still, no more jockeying for the shortest checkout lines. They'll still have the cheese guy and the bread lady-those personal interactions are why people shop at a high-end grocer after all. That means that in relatively short order, Amazon can dramatically reduce one of the biggest expenses Whole Foods carries today: labor. The Go technology isn't ready for real world use yet but let's say it's at most 36 months away from being ready for prime time. If Amazon leads the way to friction-free checkout in supermarkets, retailers that do not follow in their footsteps will find that they’re the next Borders, CompUSA, or Radio Shack. Many retailers from grocery stores to Home Depot offer self-checkout. Perhaps, but in retail, it has already begun. Yesterday, outgoing CEO of GE Jeff Immelt scoffed that robots were not going to take over factory jobs in the next five years. Any labor that doesn’t directly enhance the customer experience is suspect and should be eliminated as soon as possible. That's hyperbole, but it makes that point: this is what Amazon wants. But what does this do to labor cost? In their commercial, the lone store employee is making sandwiches. ![]() It's currently only open to Amazon employees in a single Seattle store but the idea is as simple as the implementation is complicated: use advanced scanners and trackers to automate checkout. Then you’re on the way: no lines, no checkout.” ![]() According to their website, you just “browse and shop like you would at any other store. Go is a frictionless shopping and checkout experience for physical stores. The fourth and perhaps most compelling upside for the acquisition lies with Amazon Go, a recent experiment with automated retail stores. How will Amazon leverage that loyalty? Could we see Amazon Fresh become “Whole Foods from Amazon”? It's Go time. There's no denying that it looms large over the health-food industry and is super-popular with upper-middle class soccer moms and those avocado-on-toast loving millennials we hear so much about (joke). So, maybe my brand recognition and a lifelong love of the grocery chain is stronger than most. It was ahead of its time.), and eat at a fancy restaurant called Chilis. My family lived in nearby Temple so once a month we’d drive to Austin so Mom could shop at Whole Foods while us kids ran around the nearby Book Stop (Look it up. I’m from Austin, and I’ve been shopping at Whole Foods since there was a single store in the early 80s. Third, it gives Amazon a very strong brand that is associated with organic groceries and high-end shopping experience. The Whole Foods brand - a trip down memory lane How convenient could Whole Foods home delivery be? As Dries has demonstrated in recent keynotes (blog post: ), I can envision a future where I ask my Echo Dot for some free-range chickpeas and organic shampoo and a Whole Foods van shows up at my door an hour or two later with my products (and as of today, with a sizable charge on my debit card). Nomura Instinet analyst Anthony DiClemente recently said that the grocery industry remains one of the largest and most under-penetrated markets for Amazon. It creates more markets for home grocery delivery. Second, this acquisition gives Amazon access to a grocery distribution network that enhances their own. I can’t help but think that Amazon could do even better. In February, Whole Foods Chief Executive John Mackey said that they would retain the services of Dunnhumby, a customer data and insights company, to inform merchandising and services (in other words, help us stock our shelves and get our prices down). With all the newly acquired data from Whole Foods upper-end clientele, Amazon can make more efficient stock decisions in both the retail and physical stores. They use shopping history and patterns to sell us things we need before we even know that we need them. For Amazon, it's all about the data.įirst, Amazon is, at its core, a data company. So why would Amazon jump out and make this purchase? The answer is complex and multi-faceted. ![]() (I can just imagine that email from the Whole Foods Accounts Payables department to Acquia: “Send the bill to Amazon.”) Whole Foods, for its part, has used Drupal for its web presence for at least five years-if not much longer-and holds Acquia as a key partner. Acquia Drupal is a significant part of the Whole Foods DevOps story. ![]() This morning,, the juggernaut that continues to put massive pressure on brick-and-mortar retailers, announced that it is buying Whole Foods, the popular, high-end organic foods grocer.īoth companies are major stakeholders in the Drupal ecosystem: Amazon made an investment in Acquia in 2014, and much of Acquia’s hosting infrastructure relies on Amazon Web Services. Two of the biggest retailers in the world are getting together. ![]()
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