I don't really see TJ as a WF competitor beyond the earthy crunchy vibe. TJ is mostly pretty weak in the produce, meat, cheese, and fish sections which are exactly the areas where WF is often worth the premium. I suppose they compete in the frozenprepared food that pretends to be Artisanal.

TJ is a good deal for some things but it only somewhat overlaps.

Can confirm, lived in place where TJ's and WF were almost in sight of one another and shopped at both, often in the same outing.

I don't see Amazon doing much as far as cultural changes. Twitch was largely left untouched and continues to operate as before. This was a strategic purchase so Amazon. They want you to go to Amazon for everything and a popular nation-wide grocery chain is exactly what they needed.

What you will see is a relationship between Amazon Prime and WF. But, as with the case with Twitch, it will be Amazon that deals with that and WF will likely continue to do its thing while Amazon generates MORE customer loyalty and a new customer base.

I don't know. WF does have a very loyal base of users. Unless Amazon fucks with them majorly, I don't see it changing very much. In fact, with less pressure from activist investors to cut back on expenses, they might actually get more resources to experiment with new concepts.

If money weren't a matter, I would love to shop at whole foods: shopping for groceries seems more of an experience there than at other places. Maybe using Amazon's superior operations management would let them lower prices even further attracting more regular customers.

Depends on the place. In Sedona, when Whole Foods bought the local alt grocer, people got upset at WF's corruption of the grocer's values.

When I airbnb'd in someone's Portland home once, The host worked for another local alr grocer chain, proudly telling me it is like WF but better.

Just a tangent: the downtown Seattle WF has a fantastic eatery ... and in the months before I moved, it turned into a major Amazon employer hangout, after the Amazon HQ moved there. Now I marvel at the irony it is effectively an externalized company cafeteria.

I wasn't talking about making groceries into APIs. It's that, because of the way Amazon is structured, changing out things like logistics is easier:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/14/why-amazon-is-eating-the-w...

Flip side is that, according to this: http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/03/27/amazon-go...

There are a lot of troubles with the logistics around distributing produce. The models Amazon has for managing non-perishable goods is not working well for things like bananas. It would be stupid of Amazon not to try to learn from logistics experts from Whole Foods, and Amazon has a good track record for not being stupid.

Side note: just yesterday, my wife and I went to our local Fry's for our normal shopping. They are testing hand-held devices to scan items while you shop and then just settle at the self-checkout line; this was fairly new. We gave it a try just to see what the experience is like (and likely, by the time my step-daughter comes to age, something like this will be normal). I remarked to my wife that Fry's isn't sitting still, waiting for Amazon to take over grocery shopping with Amazon Go, either.

> Aldi on the low end and Trader Joe's on the high end

Trader Joe's has limited selection and is mostly on the cheap side, often even cheaper than Ralph's in SoCal. Its the place I go for cheap produce that just happens to be organic/natural/etc... (though I don't really care about the latter).

If WF were to fail under Amazon's tutelage, maybe we shouldn't be looking at nationwide competitors but at local stores for replacement?

Here in the Bay Area I'm really happy with Draeger's. Haven't really been back to WF much since I started going there. Unlike Trader Joe's it does have a reasonably complete selection of meats (and for specialty cuts there are local butchers).