Free Republic

Whole Foods will slash prices on hundreds of items starting Wednesday, extending its focus beyond enticing Prime shoppers. The specialty grocer's last major price cut for all customers was in Nov. 2017. In the interim, it has been rolling out more perks catered to members of Amazon Prime, like offering them an extra 10 percent off discounted products. Amazon, which acquired Whole Foods in July 2017, had hoped to convert more Prime members into Whole Foods shoppers. The better Whole Foods is able to sync in-store shopping with Amazon Prime, the better it will be able to target its ads...

Amazon finally caved to pressure for a company-wide $15 minimum wage in November. At Whole Foods, the difference looks to be made up in cuts to scheduled hours. According to reports by the Guardian, employees — who remained anonymous in fear of retaliation — have experienced “significant” decreases to their scheduled hours. In many cases, this negates or even supersedes the increased hourly rate. Employees report a “30% reduction in hours per week for part-timers and about a 10% reduction for full-timers,” with one Illinois-based employee specifically saying that after the raise, his “hours went from 30 to 20 a...

The problem with Whole Foods is their regular customers. They are, across the board, across the country, useless, ignorant, and miserable. They’re worse than miserable, they’re angry. They are quite literally the opposite of every Whole Foods employee I’ve ever encountered. Walk through any store any time of day—but especially 5:30pm on a weekday or Saturday afternoon during football season—and invariably you will encounter a sneering, disdainful horde of hipster Zombies and entitled 1%ers. They stand in the middle of the aisles, blocking passage of any other cart, staring intently at the selection asking themselves that critical question: which one...

For a full week, a big black banner was posted from a sidewalk in Berkeley, California. “OCCUPY WHOLE FOODS”, it declared in large, white block letters. But the protesters who created it, a group from the animal rights activist organization Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), were not actually able to do much occupying. Just days before a weeklong protest scheduled for late September, in which the activists had planned to call attention to alleged animal welfare violations by suppliers to Whole Foods’ parent company, Amazon, the Berkeley store filed a restraining order. “We are not allowed to even step foot in...

God forgive me, but on hearing about the passing of Kofi Annan all I could think of was my favorite breakfast: Covfefe and Kouign Amman Black Covfefe and Kouign Amman. That’s how my brain works before covfefe.In case you’re not familiar with this hard to pronounce (kween-a-mon) pastry it’s a Belgian “cake” comprised of nothing more than buttery pastry layered with sugar that caramelizes to a lacquer coating in the oven. Often described as a cross between a croissant and brioche,I’d say it’s more like a puffy version of a palmier.French palmierEat the first KA at your own peril as...

Amazon and Whole Foods Market are making a surgical strike in the already brutal grocery price war. On Wednesday, Whole Foods debuted a much-anticipated loyalty program that offers special discounts to Prime customers, including 10 percent off hundreds of sale items and rotating weekly specials such as $10 per pound off wild-caught halibut steaks. Those perks are available now in Florida and will roll out to all other stores starting this summer. Amazon previously announced free two-hour delivery from Whole Foods stores for members of Prime, its subscription club with fast shipping and video streaming. The new loyalty strategy will...

The grocery chain does not own the restaurant, which is operated by an independent franchise with two other locations in California, SF Gate reports. ... “Super cool that no one in your company, from concept to construction to this tweet, saw nothing wrong with this,” another detractor agreed. “I love associating the word "fever" with my lunch. Give me the shrimp pneumonia with extra sriracha,” another quipped. ... “When we finally came up with the concept, all the names we thought of just plain sucked. Buzzwords like ‘traditional’, ‘bamboo’, ‘lotus’, and ‘golden’ weren’t memorable,” the restaurant's co-founder Kelly Kim told...

Tensions between Whole Foods Market and some of the most important brands it sells in its stores will come to head on March 19. The grocer notified certain vendors about the meeting last Saturday. A key issue discussed will be Whole Foods' efforts to centralize its merchandising. Tensions between Whole Foods Market and some of the most important brands it sells in its stores will come to a head on March 19, when they will congregate for a recently announced summit, sources familiar with the situation tell CNBC. The grocer notified certain vendors about the meeting by email last Saturday....

Whole Foods is changing the way it does business with suppliers, and some local and regional brands say it's having a crippling impact on their business. [Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com bought Whole Foods 5 months ago, but the words "Bezos" and "Amazon" never appear in the article!]

You think your job is a grind? Try working at Whole Foods, which is apparently a pretty tough place to clock in every day. “I wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares,” an anonymous staffer told Business Insider, which spoke to 27 current and former workers. “The stress has created such a tense working environment. Seeing someone cry at work is becoming normal.” Crying? There’s no crying in supermarkets! Seriously: What’s the problem? Seems the Austin, Texas-based chain, which was bought by Amazon last summer, has initiated a new inventory system called order to shelf (OTS) that...

Whole Foods has implemented a strict new inventory management system that includes bi-weekly walk-throughs and random quizzing of employees, and has left many workers feeling stressed out and punished. The new system is called order-to-shelf (OTS) and has a strict set of procedures for purchasing, displaying and storing products on store shelves and in back rooms that is supposed to make stores more efficient and cut down on waste. And to make sure stores are following the new procedures - stores are required to use 'scorecards' to evaluate each employees performance, according to Business Insider.

Pictures show empty shelves at Whole Foods stores across the country, thanks to their new policy Whole Foods used to keep a large amount of extra stock in back rooms and freezers so it could restock its shelves as soon as merchandise was sold (which pretty much all supermarkets do). However, according to Business Insider, the chain has recently gotten rid of that policy, and replaced it with a new policy that transfers items directly from delivery trucks to store shelves. This is causing many store shelves to be empty.This new policy was started prior to the chain’s recent purchase by...

Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods Market Inc. turned to social media to recruit 6,000 new store employees. The company is having a National Hiring Day on Nov. 2., encouraging prospective employees to show up casual, prepared to interview. Whole Foods says people who show up have “the possibility for on-the-spot job offers.” The company launched a website, joinwfm.com, with FAQs for prospective employees, where they can fill out a pre-hiring day application to streamline the process.

Consumers flocked to Whole Foods in droves after the organic grocery chain slashed prices by as much as 43 percent after its $13.7 billion sale to Amazon (AMZN), according to an analysis of mobile phone location data by research firm Thasos Group. (snip) Seattle-based Amazon gained customers at the expense of its rivals in the cutthroat grocery market. According to Thasos, nearly 25 percent of the new Whole Foods customers came from Walmart (WMT), the largest U.S. seller of groceries. Another 16 percent came from Kroger (KR), the No. 1 operator of conventional supermarkets and 15 percent came from warehouse...

In case you were wondering how long it would take before you'd start seeing results of Amazon's recently approved acquisition of Whole Foods, the answer is "like, right now." In addition the uniquely meaty merger of visual branding seen above—a photo caught at an LA-area Whole Foods location by USA Today's Los Angeles bureau chief Chris Woodyard—prices are already starting to drop on many of Whole Foods' most popular items.

Amazon’s $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods Market will be finalized Monday, and shoppers will see an immediate markdown in prices on a number of items, including salmon, avocados, baby kale and almond butter.

NORTH EAST — The Amazon fulfillment center in Principio Business Park originally projected to hire 700 people, but the company recently expanded its job openings to 1,000, according to recruiters manning the company’s tent at the Cecil County Fair. The growth occurs as the company expands its offerings. Last month, the e-commerce giant bought the Whole Foods company. Wages for fulfillment positions will range from $15 to $33 an hour, based on experience and performance. Chris Moyer, county director of economic development, and Bruce England, executive director of the Susquehanna Workforce Network, first confirmed the news at a Republican Club...

“Amazon just bought Whole Foods,” my friend texted me seconds after the announcement of the proposed acquisition. “It’s over. The world.” This unease is widespread, and has raised new calls for breaking up Jeff Bezos’s impending monopoly by force. Surely the company, which now generates 30% of all online and offline retail sales growth in the United States, and already controls 40% of internet cloud services, has reached too far. The 3% hike in Amazon’s share price since the announcement—which would alone more than pay for the acquisition—may attest less to the deal’s appropriateness than to investors’ growing fear that...

“Amazon just bought Whole Foods,” my friend texted me seconds after the announcement of the proposed acquisition. “It’s over. The world.” This unease is widespread, and has raised new calls for breaking up Jeff Bezos’s impending monopoly by force. Surely the company, which now generates 30% of all online and offline retail sales growth in the United States, and already controls 40% of internet cloud services, has reached too far. The 3% hike in Amazon’s share price since the announcement—which would alone more than pay for the acquisition—may attest less to the deal’s appropriateness than to investors’ growing fear that...

Amazon is looking to reduce costs at Whole Foods with a new automated checkout system that would render thousands of cashiers redundant, it has been reported. Carmen Clark, 37, an employee at the Mount Pleasant Whole Foods, said, 'Everybody's been kind of joking that it's going to be robots and drones,' after the Amazon bought the grocery chain for $13.7 billion. It turns out Clark wasn't that far off, since Amazon is trying to reduce prices by replacing cashiers with a new mobile payment system, according to a person familiar with the company's plans who spoke to Bloomberg. But Amazon...