Amazon to Experiment With New Grocery Formats

The CFO revealed that the online retailer has plans for grocery store concepts.

November 01, 2017

SEATTLE – Since Amazon purchased Whole Foods Market, there has been much speculation about what that means for the supermarket industry. During a third-quarter conference call this week, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavon revealed some of those plans with his announcement that Amazon has plans for new grocery store concepts, Retail Leader reports.

“There will be a lot of work together between Prime Now, AmazonFresh, Whole Foods, Whole Foods products on the Amazon site, Amazon Lockers at the Whole Foods stores. So, there will be a lot of integration, a lot of touch points and a lot of working together as we go forward. And we'll be also developing new store formats. We are experimenting with a lot of formats. I think that Whole Foods really gives us a vast head-start on that and a great base,” he said. “So we’re really excited about that and I think working together, will bring our different strengths to the table and really be able to build on behalf of customers.”

Olsavsky also mentioned more store openings for Whole Foods too. “We are adding a few more in the near future in California, Washington, D.C., and Austin. So, yeah, you will see more expansion from us. We’re not ready to announce what that will look like and we are working with the Whole Foods team on how many more stores we might have in that area. But still early, so those plans will develop over time,” he said.

Last week, Whole Foods said it would hire 6,000 employees in the United States by hosting a chainwide hiring event tomorrow for full-time and part-time positions for both seasonal and permanent jobs. 

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