Whole Foods Struggles to Shake ‘Whole Paycheck’ Nickname
It has been six months since Amazon.com announced its plan to acquire Whole Foods Market, and along with it promised pricing rollbacks at the grocery chain. However, to date those price cuts have seemed few and far between. When NBC News took a deeper dive into the situation, it found 269 items with lower price tags. Nearly one-third of those discounts were on toothpaste or deodorant (48) or yogurt (48). The typical Whole Foods store carries about 35,000 products, so that means less than 1 percent of the items surveyed had lower prices. Whole Foods responded with the statement below to NBC news:
"Whole Foods Market and Amazon have a shared goal to bring the highest quality, natural and organic food at affordable prices to everyone, and we’re just getting started. Since the close of the acquisition less than four months ago, we’ve lowered prices on many of our best-selling grocery items and holiday staples, and this is just the beginning. We’ll continue to work closely together to ensure we’re consistently surprising and delighting our customers while moving toward our goal, and plan to offer more in-store benefits and lower prices for customers as we continue to integrate with Amazon.”
Total Retail's Take: The media frenzy after the acquisition was announced this past summer made it seem as if the discounts would be extreme. However, Whole Foods hasn't quite lost its nickname of "Whole Paycheck" just yet. Overall, prices are only down just 1.1 percent since the acquisition. In the Philadelphia-area stores I shop, I've seen a few discounts on items, but by no means an overall shift to lower prices. While the promised discounts have been scarce to date, Amazon's presence in Whole Foods’ storefronts have been apparent. The grocer has given prime space to Amazon products, such as the Amazon Echo, as well as hosting Amazon pop-up shops at its locations.
