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Re:Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B by rainbowmverse on Friday June 16, 2017 @09:55AM (#14568971)
I'm closer to Whole Foods' nearest distribution center than an actual Whole Foods. The nearest Whole Foods is almost 40 miles away.

If this works out for Amazon, I wouldn't be surprised to see Walmart try and buy Trader Joe's. They own Aldi, which has made a big push to compete with Walmart's reach outside cities. The nearest Aldi is closer than Walmart, and that's already not far away.

Re:Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B by lorenzhs on Friday June 16, 2017 @10:04AM (#14569051)
You've got your Aldis mixed up. Aldi Nord owns Trader Joe's (not the other way around). Aldi stores in the US are Aldi Süd. The two are separate companies, Aldi Nord serves the North of Germany and Aldi Süd the South. Their international expansions are separate as well. Here's a handy map (Aldi Nord in blue): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Aldi_wor...

The line dividing Germany into Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd territory — https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Aldi_equ... — is called the "Aldi equator". We sometimes jokingly call it Germany's most important dividing line post-reunification :)

tl;dr Aldi and Trader Joe's are (theoretically) in competition, and neither owns the other. The other Aldi owns Trader Joe's.

Re:Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B by colanderman on Friday June 16, 2017 @10:27AM (#14569279)
Trader Joe's is owned by Aldi Nord; Aldi US is owned by Aldi Süd. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi#Geographic_distribution
Re:Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B by maxerickson on Friday June 16, 2017 @10:06AM (#14569063)
Walmart has ~4500 (US) stores already. Aldi is expanding rapidly but has far fewer than that.

The two Aldi locations I drive past are both located less than a mile from the nearest Walmart locations (I expect they do a fair amount of piggybacking).

The purchase doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me. I guess the most sensible thing is that they see the stores being located by the best populations to start out doing food deliveries for (affluent, so they can charge higher prices while they figure out how to do it).

Walmart has a pickup service. They keep experimenting with rapid delivery but people don't really want to pay much for it.

Re:Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B by bigjimmyk3 on Friday June 16, 2017 @11:03AM (#14569600)
After a few initial hiccups, my wife is sold on Walmart's grocery pickup service. For short-range delivery, they are also experimenting with "terrestrial drones"[1] which I have seen around town once or twice.

1. http://www.chainstoreage.com/article/different-kind-drone-ro...

Re:Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B by ghaff on Friday June 16, 2017 @10:25AM (#14569253)
The premium of rapid delivery was a sticking point going back to the dot bomb era. A lot of people want rapid delivery (though admittedly only a subset want to order groceries online). But it's a premium service and a whole lot fewer want to pay for it.
Re:Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B by Spooky23 on Friday June 16, 2017 @05:44PM (#14572866)
Both Aldi and Trader Joe's are private and can avoid these entanglements.

This deal was more about corporate politics and shareholder drama than anything else.

Re:Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B by evook on Friday June 16, 2017 @10:18AM (#14569187)
It's the other way around. Aldi owns Trader Joe's.