
Under Amazon, Whole Foods prices were expected to decrease but they’re rising - pseudolus
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/12/18222200/whole-foods-price-increase-amazon
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siruncledrew
Whole Foods is definitely not even close to cheap for groceries. Even when
using Prime and the Amazon credit card, it's still a hefty amount more
expensive than Kroger, Giant, Aldi, or Food Lion.

For standard grocery items, I have not seen a real difference in quality
compared with the grocery stores mentioned above to warrant the higher cost.
It's all just branding.

If you really want 'organic', fresh grocery items on the cheap, I have found
the Asian grocery stores (Lotte, HMart, 99Ranch) to be the best ones.

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microtherion
Whole Foods never was cheap. I used to joke that they sold salad by the carat.

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reaperducer
Maybe it's just the sorts of things I buy, but I get some pretty good deals at
Whole Foods now.

A particular cheese I buy each week is $12.99/pound at Albertson's, and only
slightly less at Kroger. At Whole Foods it's $5.99/pound, and sometimes on
sale for half that, so I stock up.

I shop at Whole Foods more since Amazon took over. Not because of the Prime
discount; I don't think I've ever bought something that was on sale. But to me
it seems cheaper than before and has more things that I'm interested in.

Yes, it's still more expensive than the competition. But the competition I use
for laundry soap and other items I can get anywhere. Where I live, Whole Foods
is still the best option for fresh food. (Except for beef, which I go to a
butcher for.)

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nikolay
I am not sure why people expect Amazon to offer the lowest prices. When I
broke the habit to buy everything on Amazon, I found much better deals
elsewhere. In fact, for those who know how expensive their fulfillment
services are, that they keep raising the costs and the storage fees, you can't
get a good deal on small ticket items at Amazon anymore.

Whole Foods where I live was pretty much empty before Amazon bought it. Now, I
see some revival, but nothing like during the first days. But it's because you
can find all these products elsewhere for much less.

I will give you an example for a niche product: I love Devon Double Cream.
It's $6.99 at Whole Foods and $4.99 at another local store. The other local
store sells it at $5.99. Well, I assume, the cost is around $3. How can Whole
Foods sell stuff at such huge margin?!

When I was working with retailers back in Bulgaria in the '90s, the margin was
15-20%, and on some items - even below 10%. There were no deals, no coupons,
no gimmicks, and stores were still making great profits from the volume. To be
fair, there was a 5% fee f you wanted to pay with a charge card. This is no
longer the case in America! When I see a 70% off sale, to me it's a clear
signal never to set foot at that store! Even 30% off is scary!

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gdulli
I can't imagine many "expected" the prices to decrease beyond an introductory
period used to buy some goodwill to offset the hit to the Whole Foods brand in
the acquisition.

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moomin
Whole Foods are just one data point in an increasingly long list of Amazon
acquisitions that were hailed as being the start of something huge but are
just kind of there.

I mean, it beats the hell out of the Yahoo model of destroying the acquired
business, but Amazon are now in a lot of markets where they’re basically the
same as everyone else.

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benologist
Amazon loves being the same because then you can buy the same thing from them
that you were buying from someone else.

They are even being investigated for perhaps using 3rd party vendors' sales
data on Amazon to decide which products to copy, having released tens of
thousands of products already under their own brands. They have even perhaps
copied the occasional SaaS hosted on AWS too.

[https://thehill.com/policy/technology/408797-report-eu-
quest...](https://thehill.com/policy/technology/408797-report-eu-questioning-
companies-over-amazon-copycat-products)

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/08/amazon_copies_partn...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/08/amazon_copies_partner_products/)

