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The Lasting Legacy of the Amazon-Whole Foods Merger Will Likely Be the Spread of Grocery Tech [Amazon-Whole Foods Symposium]
Truth on the Market
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When Amazon and Whole Foods announced they were pursuing a $13.7 billion deal in June of last year, the grocer was struggling. Whole Foods might have been an early leader in organic food, but with that success came competition. Walmart began selling organics in 2014 while Costcost and Safeway revamped product lines for changing consumer preferences. By 2017, same-store sales at Whole Foods had declined for the previous two years and Barclays estimated that the company had lost about 3 percent of their foot traffic between 2015 and 2017. Simply put, Whole Foods wasn’t well managed enough to compete.