Amazon Moves to Conquer Groceries with Whole Foods Purchase

The big business news rolling into the weekend was Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods, a move that seemed to take the retail world by surprise. Industry analyst Charlie O’Shea calls the $13.4 billion deal “a transformative transaction, not just for food retail, but for retail in general.” Soon, Amazon will have 460 Whole Foods stores in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. under its control, a fact that has terrifying implications for the e-commerce titan’s competitors, chief among them Walmart. FinTech app developers who have closely observed Jeff Bezos’s big risks and unbelievable innovations can’t wait to see how this latest deal shakes up the retail industry.

While Walmart and other physical retailers struggle to cut in on Amazon’s stranglehold on e-commerce, Amazon has been trying to expand more into the brick-and-mortar world. The Whole Foods purchase is the company’s biggest step in that direction, giving the retailer a lot of established real estate — in relatively young and well-off areas to boot. Perhaps more importantly, the acquisition gives Amazon a huge boost in its goal of capturing a larger share of the groceries market. San Francisco FinTech app developers have watched the online shopping struggle to get consumers to buy fresh produce and meats off the internet. Although Amazon has experimented with its own quick-stop grocery stores, like AmazonFresh, it’s undoubtedly an advantage to have physical retail spaces that are already a hit among hip customers with deep pockets. No wonder Walmart is shaking in its boots.

Of course, industry analysts are already making predictions about how this deal will change retail, and rumors are circulating about the ways this will change the Whole Foods shopping experience. Amazon’s predilection for automation in its own physical stores has some employees worrying about their future with Whole Foods, which has been listed as one of the top 100 companies to work for by Fortune every year since 1998. A spokesman for Amazon assures the public that nobody will lose their jobs as a result of the acquisition, but FinTech app developers familiar with the startup’s reputation have reason to be skeptical about that claim. How else will the company afford the price reductions that industry experts expect? Are Prime members going to get their groceries at a discount? This big deal doesn’t just have retail wonks buzzing — consumers are excited to see how Amazon will change the grocery shopping experience. We’re all hungry for a change at the supermarket.