
Alaskan halibut provides a glimpse of Amazon’s strategy with Whole Foods - wallflower
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/alaskan-halibut-caught-by-a-century-old-seattle-boat-provides-a-glimpse-of-amazons-strategy-with-whole-foods/
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batbomb
.... in which the Seattle Times discovers that grocery stores use items at or
below cost to lure in buyers to purchase other things at the store.

12 packs of coke were often sold at a loss at grocery stores. I'm not sure
what they cost now, but cost use to be in the $3.50 range in 2007. Costco was
usually about a bit more than the cost but they were selling 24 can flats, so
probably still turning a profit. In 2007 it wasn't uncommon to do 4/$10 deals
and even 5/$10 deals occasionally around the super bowl. 3/$10 was the average
sale if they wanted to try to boost sales. Other examples include family packs
of NY Strip/Ribeye.

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6cd6beb
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader)

Certainly not a new thing.

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mattferderer
What is the difference between what they're doing & every other grocery store?

I'm not sure I understand the difference after skimming through the article
except that they have a reputation for more expensive, organic foods.

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tptacek
Durable, nationwide discounts on low-margin, premium products aren't a norm in
the grocery industry. It would be similarly noteworthy if Kroger started
selling dry-aged prime ribeyes at $8/#. (Less so if Costco did it, but Costco
isn't a normal grocer).

~~~
EpicEng
Two minutes of searching tells me differently. Grocery stores have used loss
leaders for decades to get people in the store. Why do you say the opposite?

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ip26
Loss leaders aren't new, but usually they are either temporary, local, or on
low-value products (think oranges, chips or soda instead of salmon)- or all
three.

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jorams
I thought the article was pretty clear that the loss leader price was only
active for one week? That's very temporary.

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ip26
My mistake, sorry. I got thrown by the parent's "durable".

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whoisjuan
This is basically what dollar stores do. You have to lose profit on some items
to get traffic and regain that profit in different items.

Traffic is exponentially better than being profitable in every item since you
can expose the customer base to other products and start deploying other
fidelization channels. You won't get that if you have the same outlier buyers
giving you profit on a few expensive items.

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dpflan
Seems like use the discounts to attract customers and convince them to join
Amazon Prime. The Prime promotions and connection are everywhere in WF, and
cashiers are always asking, even when the card-reader has a sticker(s) on it.

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TheAdamist
For an occasional shopper at WF who is just trying to pay and leave the store,
whether or not you have prime the correct answer is "no" to get them to shut
up so you can pay and leave.

~~~
felixgallo
Scanning your app at the scanners is pretty quick and painless, like any other
rewards card, and for me at least seems to be worth it more often than not.

(disclaimer: I work for amazon, although not WF/retail)

~~~
codq
I'm uninterested in having the 'Whole Foods App' on my phone. I'm similarly
uninterested in having the 'Amazon App' on my phone.

I offer my phone number to verify my Prime membership. Works fine.

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username223
> "Do they take the profit from their non-retail efforts, which today is
> primarily cloud computing, and then reinvest those profits to take share in
> grocery?" Forte said.

Yes. Even better, they can push people to sign up for Prime by jacking up
prices for non-Prime members. When faced with these "loyalty" programs
elsewhere, I just type in a fake phone number, or an old land line that has
probably been reassigned. I suspect you can't do that at Amazon stores.

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Aloha
I'm more interested in the fact that someone is fishing for halibut in a 103
year old wooden schooner in 2019. The rest of this article is in my opinion,
not news.

~~~
jack-facts
This is actually more common than you'd think. There are plenty of older
wooden boats still fishing both in the lower 48 and up north. The old halibut
schooners are some of the most prized boats out there.

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aj7
This article had virtually no content. An inexperienced reporter was fed a ton
of filler, and wound up acting as an Amazon cheerleader. So Whole Foods used
halibut as a loss leader. So what?

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bayareanative
Alaskan black cod is da bomb. Way, way better than any other fish. And more
sustainable than halibut and most other commercial fish, at present.

