Prime Foods

Amazon had a good week last week.  There were a lot of sales on their various signature products (Echo, Kindle, Fire, etc) in lieu of Father's Day, they launched the Dash Wand with Echo so that you can 'say it or scan it', and they agreed to purchase the Whole Foods grocery chain for $13.4 Billion.  A good week indeed.

It is the Whole Food deal that I want to focus on.  As someone who has spent a couple of decades in a variety of retail positions, from floor sales to manager to vendor rep, as well as some opinions on where automation may take us, this deal raised my eyebrows and got me going, "Hmmm."  With that in mind, I read a few articles, starting with two from the Grey Lady:

• Amazon to Buy Whole Foods for $13.4 Billion
• The Amazon-WalMart Showdown That Explains the Modern Economy

Both articles are worth your time (if you haven't already read them), but the focus of both is too narrow.  They both only scratch the surface of why Amazon might have agreed to buy a brick-and-mortar grocery chain.  Yes, they have been dabbling with physical locations for the last year or two: Amazon Go being one and they now have a physical book store or two.  Yes, they want to take more market share from WalMart.  But to swallow a nationwide chain when they have been spending two decades destroying nationwide chains is a different animal all together.