In 2017, Amazon entered the grocery business by tossing Whole Foods in its shopping cart. Amazon spent more than $13 billion to buy this 40-year-old supermarket chain known for its organic merchandise and, at times, its sky-high prices. In the grocery world, the purchase was a cataclysmic event. “The acquisition of Whole Foods was the alarm bell that started all these multibillion-dollar investments in digital grocery capabilities,” says Jon Springer, executive editor of the trade publication Winsight Grocery Business. “It was like, Oh, my God, we’ve got to do something about this.”
The COVID pandemic shifted the industry’s focus toward food delivery, which only played further into Amazon’s strengths. And now, people in the world of groceries, people on Wall Street, just people in general, are extremely curious about Amazon’s supermarket ambitions, given the company’s habit of taking a wrecking ball to any market it gets involved with. “Everything is done differently today because of Amazon, and the grocery industry is one of the last industries to come under that influence,” Springer says.
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