Now that Whole Foods is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon, the marching orders have been given to Whole Foods, "Cut prices!"
At the Columbus Circle store in New York City organic Fuji apples were sliced from $3.49 a pound to $1.99, organic avocado prices were slashed from $2.79 each to $1.99, and organic rotisserie chicken has been carved from $13.99 to $9.99, according to Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, in Gowanus, banana prices have been peeled down from $0.79 a pound to $0.49, grass-fed 85 percent lean ground beef has been minced from $10.99 a pound to $6.99 a pound from, and organic baby kale is chopped from $3.99 a pack to $3.49, Business Insider reports.
Pfft... It appears as if they are just reducing some overpriced NYC area prices to country wide median prices. I live in a non-Fed money spigot area and the new Whole Foods "low" prices are almost exactly what I pay for most of those same items at the priciest local supermarkets. The only outlier I see is the beef but it is only local, grass fed, both terms that can be gamed to introduce lower quality meat than beef labeled USDA organic.
ReplyDeleteCompetition in price is great. However, Amazon is going to learn quickly that supermarket margins are razor thin already. Their warehouse distribution/delivery model for hard goods just doesn't translate to perishable items like produce, meat, dairy, etc. My prediction is that the Whole Foods acquisition will be a money loser and it will relatively quickly and be quietly jettisoned back into the wild as a stand alone company or be acquired at an extreme discount by another chain whose core competency is groceries.
Where I live these new prices are comparable, for the most part, with their non-organic counterparts in the supermarket. BJs is still probably less expensive. Both are 15 minute drive while my supermarket is right up the street.
ReplyDeleteHopefully Whole Foods puts downward price pressure on my big chain supermarket. Krugman, please tell me again why deflation sucks? Leftists, please tell me again why market competition is bad for me? GOP, please tell me again why Antitrust is good for me?