Amazon tests mixing and matching its grocery operations
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By combining its Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh fulfillment networks, Amazon tries for better footing against giants like Walmart and Kroger.
By Wes Davis, a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020.
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Amazon’s next ideas for growing its grocery business could blur the lines between Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh by enmeshing the two businesses’ fulfillment networks in a new set of experiments, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Amazon has reportedly started shipping Whole Foods products from 26 Amazon Fresh fulfillment centers and plans to build a microfulfillment center at a Pennsylvania Whole Foods Market and stocking it with Amazon Fresh household goods and groceries. Another part of the plan includes an experimental “Amazon Grocery” inside a Chicago Whole Foods that offers brands and groceries that the upscale store wouldn’t normally carry, according to WSJ.
The goal of the tests is to give Amazon customers a way to buy products “ranging from organic produce to Tide detergent and Cheez-It crackers” from one source, rather than multiple stores, the Journal writes. Doing that could give its grocery businesses “greater scale with online customers” as it tries to drive deeper into a market dominated by companies like Walmart and Kroger, which already distribute orders from their many brick-and-mortar stores.
These are the latest in a long string of grocery and retail maneuvers by Amazon. Its other recent moves include expanding Amazon’s unlimited grocery subscription and leaning into “Dash Carts” that let customers scan products as they go. The company has also stepped back from programs like Just Walk Out cashierless checkout and shuttered its drive-up grocery stores.
