How Amazon buying Whole Foods could one day affect how you shop

How Amazon buying Whole Foods could one day affect how you shopHow Amazon buying Whole Foods could one day affect how you shopWe all know the lament of the office worker theres just no time to take on the demands of bringing lunch to work every day, especially if its a healthy lunch. One big deal today could change thatAmazon announced today that it is buying the upscale grocery chain Whole Foods in a deal worth about $13.7 billion.Amazonse-commerce empirehas already forever changed how we shop online and now it wants to extend its reach into how we eat.pullquoteSometimes nicknamed Whole Paycheck by laypersons unwilling to pay $93 for truffles, Whole Foods has been strugglingto compete with competitors like Costco. /pullquoteWhole Foods, while notably expensive, faced a paradoxical problem of its own popularity, which welches easily imitated.Sometimes nicknamed Whole Paycheck by laypersons unwilling to pay $93 for truffles, Whole Foods has been strugglingto compete with competitors l ike Costco, Trader Joes and Walmart as they also began offering organic foods, but at cheaper prices.Amazon wants to be part of that $100 billion habit. With thisdeal, Amazon is hoping that more people will associateAmazon.com with being their one-stop destination for all shopping needs - even for fresh vegetables.Of curse, Amazon is known for technology, so where does that come in? Simply this Through Amazons wide range of technology products, Whole Foods customersmay be part of a new future where you can plan your grocery list through a voice assistant or a barcode scanner. Imagine how useful that will be for shopping from work, or while commuting.If we want to see more on howAmazon could change how you shop at Whole Foods, we can look towardsits Amazon Go prototype.In this conceptstore, Amazon experimented with making cashiers and checkout lines obsolete byusing sensors to track what foods you buy, so you can just plektrum up your food and go.Amazon already launched its own groc ery delivery business, the AmazonFresh subscription service, in itsSeattle home basein 2007, with some success.But it hasnt yet had nationwide success with online grocery shopping because perishable foods come with unique efficiency challenges that the companys advanced logistics technology doesnt account for.Why fresh food is so hard to getFresh food, with its lumps and bumps, defies many types of automation. An MIT paper memorably recounted how Amazon production workers were forced to discard extra bananas because AmazonFresh markets definition of a banana bunch was exactly five bananas. Abouta third of bananas that could be sold were wasted that way.pullquoteAmazon experimented with making cashiers and checkout lines obsolete byusing sensors to track what foods you buy, so you can just pick up your food and go./pullquoteBut through its new acquisition, Amazon is signaling that its found the way to getting you that bunch of bananas quicker and more effectively bytaking over your l ocal brick-and-mortar store.ThroughWhole Foods 460 stores in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., Amazon gains new footholds into its fooddistribution network, making the logistics and coordination of delivering fresh foods to your doorstep more possible. For Whole Foods, the acquisition comes at a much-needed time.Amazon disrupted the retail industry after it conditioned us to the convenienceof same-day home delivery service. By taking over our Whole Foods grocery carts, Amazon is projecting a future where customers could be telling their Amazon personal assistants, Alexa, deliver my conflict-free lettuce in five minutes - and not have that be a joke.And that makes your sad desk lunch just a little less sad - although it will still leave you at least $1000 poorer, if not a little more. Many people will decide thats a price theyre willing to pay for convenience.