Amazon has a much more robust web-based infrastructure than Safeway or Whole Foods. They should be able to drive sales with innovative I.T. solutions.storewanderer wrote:So essentially the same concept as Safeway.com?
Whole Foods already has a "concierge" service that has a delivery fee and a 10% upcharge for a personal shopper to go shop for you and then you pick your items up at the store. Orders are either phoned in, emailed in, or faxed in. They have contracts with some tourist entities up at Lake Tahoe where groundskeepers or some other staff of the said entities drive down to Reno to pick up the orders which Whole Foods fulfills from the Reno Store. The system is pretty low tech, the store literally just scans everything into the cash register then keys the credit card number of the user for the bill. It is a little bit of a challenge as tourists want items like Oreos or Heinz Ketchup and Whole Foods does not have those and then fulfills the order with Newman O's or some "other" Ketchup. Some customers are still funny about brand and it will be interesting to see how Amazon goes about that. I think Amazon will need to figure out a way for customers to be able to order whatever food they want, and fulfill it locally, not just what Whole Foods wants to sell to the customer.
I would imagine that they would still not carry Oreos or Heinz Ketchup. As the strategy relates to the Whole Foods purchase they would most likely be expanding their presence in the Organic & Health food segment. I would think that Amazon Fresh would continue to operate on it's own where feasible as a separate entity.