Amazon’s grocery store dreams are reshaping Whole Foods

Customers astatine a Pennsylvania Whole Foods tin bid Kraft Mac & Cheese portion they shop. | Image: Amazon

Amazon built a portal to Kraft Mac & Cheese, Goldfish crackers, and Nestlé Drumsticks wrong 1 of its Whole Foods stores — and it plans to bash the aforesaid astatine others. In a blog station connected Wednesday, Amazon details a Whole Foods conception store successful Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, wherever shoppers tin bid market items from Amazon utilizing QR codes scattered passim the supermarket.

The Pennsylvania conception store has a built-in “microfulfillment center” packed with products that you wouldn’t usually find wrong Whole Foods. When a lawsuit places an bid from Amazon Fresh, autonomous “ShopBot” robots developed by a institution called Fulfil volition statesman to retrieve the products. Customers volition past person a substance notification erstwhile their bid is acceptable for pickup astatine the Amazon pickup and returns antagonistic wrong the store.

“As we stitchery lawsuit feedback from this archetypal location, we program to refine and grow this offering to further stores implicit time,” Amazon says.

A study from The Wall Street Journal archetypal highlighted the Pennsylvania-based Whole Foods conception store past year. This caller station from Amazon provides adjacent much accusation astir the format, which attempts to sneak much products into Whole Foods without tarnishing the store’s estimation for selling earthy and integrated goods. Amazon besides launched a abstracted experimentation successful Chicago that puts an Amazon Fresh store close next to a Whole Foods.

Amazon’s market concern has lone go much intertwined with Whole Foods implicit the past year. In January, Amazon appointed Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel arsenic the VP of Amazon’s market business, and it plans to crook Whole Foods’ firm workers into Amazon employees successful December.

Along with allowing shoppers to spot orders portion wrong the Plymouth Meeting Whole Foods, Amazon says section customers tin besides spot orders online, which they tin past prime up successful store oregon person delivered. “We’re making market buying much convenient for customers by thoughtfully blending our market offerings and leveraging caller fulfillment capabilities successful originative ways,” Buechel says.