Category: Whole foods market

Amazon announced yesterday that its shakeup of Whole Foods Market will begin this coming Monday, August 28, on its first day as the new owner. Bezos and team understand that with all eyes on them, this is their first, best, and cheapest opportunity to drive home what the new sheriff in town is all about – and as a result they announced 2 major, audacious changes to WFM. The first change confirms what everyone has suspected: Whole Foods will sell groceries via Amazon, and Amazon will deliver groceries via Whole Foods. Not merely “either”, “or”, or “both”, but something synergistically bigger than the sum of the parts. Boom. And the other audacious change is that Whole Foods’ new mission is to make healthy and organic food “affordable for everyone.” Price cuts starting Monday. Double boom. Wow, what a ride.

It’s hard to imagine a bigger, more earth-shaking move in the retail grocery world than Friday’s announcement that Amazon (AMZN) is acquiring Whole Foods Market (WFM) for 13.7B (a 25% premium over its price at the time of the announcement).

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, is perhaps the most strategically brilliant businessman of our time. The main thing for the rest of us to do is figure out what he’s doing, what’s next, and how we can survive (or even prosper in the face of) this significant event.