Will Amazon ruin Whole Foods?

Will Amazon ruin Whole Foods?

nobody here shops at Whole Foods?

Whole Foods was garbage to begin with. They forced a company I worked for into selling out to them and the quality dropped like 90%. Garbage company with garbage practices and even worse food. I can elaborate later if you want.

Whole foods can't get any worse

they could if they became partial foods

I've been in Whole Foods 3 times in my life. Each time was depressing.

I'd rather find a sprouts, or even Vons.

fuck you

please elaborate

Sprouts is GOAT

amazon make everything better

Idk me and my dad are about to go to a Amazon/whole foods conference because we sell food to whole foods right now. My dad suspects Amazon wants to take whole foods into the online market place.

Amazon has already integrated WF stock into Amazon Fresh so yes, you are correct.

OP is an idiot, Amazon bailed out WF by buying them out. WF was losing massive market share because all their competitors were starting to sell organic meat and produce for far cheaper and the WF CEO did nothing to regain market share.

sprouts or aldi is the way to go.

the only reason i go to whole foods is to look at the MILFs in yoga pants

Your dad is pretty slow

hopefully

farmers generally are

In the best case scenario, yes

Whole Foods ruined Whole Foods. Amazon may be a genuine improvement.

Amazon like the online shopping company? They do groceries now?

Meh. I've always been more of a Sprouts and Central Market person myself.

>being this out of touch with current news
Jesus, man

This right here. Whole Foods stopped being special as soon as the difference between average and specialty grocery stores became mostly negligible, and they took too long to address this issue.

Here's their problem: If I wanted to only buy organic/all-natural/eco-friendly shit, I don't need a Whole Foods to do that. I can just keep going to the Albertsons-owned supermarket and Walmart I already shop at.

Can you get asparagus water at either of those places though?

Sorry, had to wait until dinner service died down and I could get away.for a moment. I'll try to keep it to a two posts.

Years ago I got my "real" start in the industry working for a company somewhat like WF. WF wasn't as ubiquitous then and we didn't have a WF or anything like it anywhere near us. There was a decent sized family run local grocery store that had been in the area for along time.

The son had taken over and opened up a new location right in the heart of downtown. It had a lot of the same "type" of stuff WF has. Organic and natural foods and things like that. It also had a full kitchen, huge cheese section(our cheese guy actually won awards nationally) woodfire pizza oven, a 16k wok station, hot bar, soup station, beer on tap, upper and lower level dining, we sourced all of our meat and almost all of our produce locally from great farms, sushi that was made in house with fish that was flown in every other day on ice and cut in house, meat, sausages, etc were all made in house as well. We also had a large deli case with tons of items and not just stuff you would typically find in a deli case, sandwiches, salads, wraps, all made to order, a huge bakery and all bread and desserts were made in house. He dumped a ton of money into the place and spared no expense making sure everything was of the highest quality. Everything was taken very seriously. The bakery, sushi, and BOH was staffed almost exclusively by seasoned cooks. We had an awesome EC and the whole managerial staff was amazing.

I started out as a apprentice portager and soon became chief portager, after that I took on more responsibility and became a sous chef. It was an amazing place to work and learn. I learned so much there from staff and I had full creative freedom plus access to any ingredient I wanted. The ingredients we used in the kitchen were of the same quality that was sold in the store.

cont

If we didn't have it I could pull it off the shelves and if we didn't have it there I could order it even if I just wanted to play around. I developed a ton of recipes that were put into regular productions as were a lot of other cooks' dishes. I became close with the owner and other higher ups, friends even. It was very profitable and popular.

This location was across the street from the river that runs through the heart of downtown. Across from it was a vacant lot. We were doing very well. Around this time WF popularity was starting to really grow and they were expanding a lot. They came to my town and wanted to buy the store from the owner. He refused. It was his passion project and he cared about it a lot. They offered him more money and he refused again. When they came around again they told him he could either sell the location to them or they would buy the property directly across from them and build their location there. He sold the company.

cont

Things went downhill fast. Most of us stayed on at least for a while. They quit buying local produce and shipped their own in. They quit buying meat from the people we had been buying from for years and shipped their own lower quality meat in from across the country. They stopped buying fresh fish and making sushi in house. Even though we had well trained chefs doing it in house they brought in an outside company and outsourced the whole process completely. The quality of the food we used BOH dropped dramatically. Almost everything got shipped in in bags. All the deli items came in bags and you just dumped them together and mixed them up. The soup came in bags and you heated them up in a water bath. The stuff on our hot bar either came in bags you heated or came frozen and you just put them in the oven.

There was no real cooking anymore. People started leaving and were replaced with hipsters and college kids without a clue but you didn't need one anymore. For the few times you were required to pick up a knife you were forced to wear chainmail gloves so you couldn't cut yourself which were stupid and fuck and hindered your movement. The 16k wok station completely went to waste. They did take quite a few of our best selling recipes our chefs had come up with including our own and started selling them as their own at our location and other locations. It wasn't long before they came in bags as well.

cont (final)

Not too long after all of this I just couldn't take it anymore. Most of the people I had worked with had left and I didn't want to be associated with the company anymore. From my time there I had made some good connections and with a good word from my EC I got my first job on the line at the premiere fine dining restaurant in my area and moved on. I worked in a few placed around the country after that and a few years overseas before coming home. I drive by every now and then and its really a shame of what it has become compared to what it once was. That place really meant a lot to me and they just turned it to shit almost overnight.

People think of WF and they think of quality, they think of natural and organic foods, they think of health foods, local products, and sustainability, and how they treat their employees well. It couldn't be further from the truth. The quality was abysmal, they treated employees like shit, they opt to stock their stuff instead of local products, and the waste is amazing. They throw so much stuff away. If we couldn't use something we would turn it into something we could as long as the quality was still there, we marked food down at the end of the night so it wouldn't be wasted and if it wasn't sold the employees could take it home. At WF you would be immediately terminated if you tried to do that. Its not healthy in the slightest. The calorie count of some of that stuff was through the roof as was the sodium content on most things.

I am sure there is a lot more but you get the idea.

It could only get better

I mostly just like the brands Whole Foods stocks desu, I could care less about whether it's healthy or organic or whatever. That said I am really disappointed that their business practices are so shitty

>Says the wage cucks living in their urban guilded cages

How's paying off your debt to your overlords going?

Sounds like someone struck a nerve

>I am sure there is a lot more
Go on.

WF has been an overpriced lie from the start. But they did a good job targeting concerned affluent customers as a lifestyle brand. Which made them an object of scorn for people outside of that demographic. Their problem was that they're increasingly no longer the only game in town for that, and they were losing market share as a result. Amazon is trying to make them more competitive and thus more profitable.

But with WF quality has never been the priority, it's ALWAYS been a matter of lifestyle marketing.

That's pretty much all I can think of off the top of my head unless you can give more specific direction.

not that guys but thanks for the story, was interesting read

Shit, that's depressing as hell. That place sounded like a great place to work but Fuck WF

Then I guess you're not sure there is more after are, now are you? Stupid stupid bitch.

Never got the hype for whole foods. But I have a Fresh Market about equal distance from me.

This place.. was it in Georgia?

No

Well then they've pulled the same shenanigans more than once apparently.

>aldi

that cheapo place? Why?

>tfw I bought 10 shares of AMZN @ $980 a pop
Will Amazon ever recover?

>companies battle it out

Glad I grow/raise most of my food.

Wouldn't surprise me.

Damn, that angers me. There are no whole foods in my area but I'll probably never shop there after reading that.

?

Whole Foods is low tier hipster bait, mostly plebs shop there, now the patricians choice is Trader Joe's, amazon will take some of Whole Foods market share because hipsters love what has novelty, not what has value

whole foods = trader joes = sprouts

>blocks your path

What a shame. Thanks for sharing this, kind user.

Too poor to shop at whole foods
I shop at kroger

AMZN stock is overvalued. Prepare for the bubble to burst.

Amazon is like if Wal Mart was as cool as Facebook. I'm not taking that advice user.

If you got in during 2014 for $300 getting out at $980 is bretty good.

>When they came around again they told him he could either sell the location to them or they would buy the property directly across from them and build their location there. He sold the company.
Sometimes real estate leases will have non-compete clauses preventing companies from coming in and gutting business with a new location, usually in the case of shopping centers. He also could have contacted city council, they could have possibly intervened.

Alas, it's a shame to see small businesses ground out by corporations.

F

GROCERY STORE POWER RANKINGS
1. Locally owned locally sourced mom and pop
2. Sprouts
3. Kroger
4. Aldi/Publix
5. Albertsons/Safeway/Vons
6. Trader Joes
7. Smart N Final/Grocery Outlet/other discount stores
8. Mexican supermarkets
99. """Organic""" chains (Lassens)
999. Whole Foods
999999. Walmart

>tfw the only close grocery to me is Cermak (mexican grocery chain) and Aldi and Kroger are miles away

>shopping at whole foods

what is the best way to steal from WF and more importantly eat pizza in the store?

winco is the shit,
the size of costco, the lowest prices, and treats their employees well

No problem

Interesting. I didn't know that. I don't think he did either but he might have tried it.

I miss sprouts but I also really hated it when I lived in CO. Idk.

>mfw I've repeatedly seen Aldi Lidl and Hofer being called good by Americans
>they're bottom of the barrel, suspiciously warehouse looking stores with low quality everything except for bread here
are they just different over there? you don't go to these unless you're poor as fuck or everything else's closed