Amazon To Buy Whole Foods Market For $13.7 Billion (usatoday.com) 185
Amazon said Friday it would buy Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion as the giant internet retailer makes a deeper push into the grocery space. From a report: Amazon has dabbled in brick-and-mortar operations, experimenting with a bookstore that opened in New York last month and plans to open "no-checkout" convenience stores. But the Whole Foods acquisition represents a dramatic departure from its early business model founded on online retailing and related technology. Grocery retail is a notoriously thin-profit-margin business. And Whole Foods -- often derided as "Whole Paycheck" -- has struggled in recent years to keep up with emerging competitors that are expanding nationwide with cheaper items. Traditional grocery stores have also widened their organic food selections in hopes of retaining customers who are increasingly looking to eat healthily.
Grocery retail is a notoriously thin-profit-margin (Score:5, Funny)
Now I will be able to get (Score:4, Funny)
a kombucha dash button. Thank god! Someday we'll all wonder what life was like before that.
You evidently have never shopped Whole Paycheck if you think profit margins are thin. It's ripe for home delivery since the people who shop there have more money than time what with all the Hot-room Yoga and Reki to get done. But home delivery is a serious logistic problem, at least if you plan to make money at it and not just burn your Angel investor's stash before auctioning off your sock puppet mascot. Amazon has that figured out. And it works both directions. As long as you are going the the Store, why not pick up your amazon order there a day earlier. Finally if you are going to deliver things by drone they need to be small, lightweight, and expensive as a $22/oz lavender oil douche.
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Home delivery is not expensive.
Once you start to count all of the costs of driving, even before you count your time collecting stuff, or the cost of running a car, it can rapidly become economic.
As one example, I pay (in the UK) $3-8 (depending on time of week) to get deliveries of over $60.
This is available from several supermarkets.
Of course, because I can't drive for health reasons, it becomes _WAY_ cheaper than public transport.
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Home delivery is not expensive.
Once SDCs are available, home delivery will likely be cheaper than going shopping. Amazon is getting ready for the future. They can sacrifice profit in the short run, so they have the infrastructure in place to profit in the long run.
Since they have an astronomically high P/E of over 500, their investors seem to agree that this is a smart strategy.
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Self-driving cars don't solve grocery delivery, you need human-like robots for that. The robot has to select the right set of groceries, unload them from the truck, navigate complex apartment walkways, identify the right unit number (which can be very tricky -- humans keep messing that up in my complex because there's two of each unit number in the same complex with a different address), ring the bell if there is one or knock on the door otherwise, wait an appropriate amount of time, understand the customer
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You evidently have never shopped Whole Paycheck if you think profit margins are thin.
There are several co-op type stores in my area, I don't usually shop them except when they have something I want specifically (like duck eggs). They are small footprint stores with limited skus and selection.
When Whole Foods opened a new store in a high-end shopping area nearby, I went in to see what all the fuss was about. What a disappointment -- I don't think they had many more skus than the local co-ops (and no duck eggs!). The product package sizes were also tiny, half size of normal store equivalen
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It's ripe for home delivery
I really wonder about that. In my town, people go to Whole Foods as an experience. To be seen by other hip people, buying trendy food.
Never mind that the same people stop by Costco afterwards to buy food staples by the caseload.
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I tend t agree, some WF even have massage therapists to give a chair massage before the so so difficult task of picking up some groceries for cook to make this evening. And without the massage available, I imagine they would have sent the maid or butler to do the shopping. It is so oppressive to be filthy rich, how do they do it?
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If you're charging $9 for a tomato, the margins are probably fatter than average.
Worth mentioning that chains like Publix do well enough to pay out dividends while adding stores pretty much every year.
Calculating profits vs investment is kind of awkward in supermarket retail. To give an example: I know of one UK chain that actually was able to rake in huge profits, for several decades, simply by delaying their payments to suppliers by up to three months as a matter of policy (suppliers knew this up fro
Re: Grocery retail is a notoriously thin-profit-ma (Score:2)
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Point is Whole Foods is a bunch of dicks, run by a bunch of dicks.
All the cute lesbian clerks are lady boys?!
Re:Grocery retail is a notoriously thin-profit-mar (Score:4, Informative)
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How does a good Christian virgin boy like you know about lady boys?
I work with a lot of ex-military folks. Most of the Vietnam vets have gone through Bankok at one time or another during the war. I've heard quite a few stories about the prostitutes.
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"You've obviously never been to a Whole Foods :)"
Well, considering that the nearest one is like 1000 kilometers away from me (about 10000 football field lengths for you US types), the answer is indeed "obviously not".
Point is Whole Foods is a bunch of dicks, run by a bunch of dicks...
...for a bunch of dicks? On the other hand, at least they shall not perish this way.
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Re:Grocery retail is a notoriously thin-profit-mar (Score:5, Insightful)
They are also cashing in on people who equate:
All Natural = Healthy
GMO = Poison
Preservatives = Part of big food.
Now the food quality is probably rather good, because they are not competing on price, so they can pick the quality products. And if it doesn't have all this "bad stuff" listed above then the food is probably fresh, as it will probably spoil soon.
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All Natural = Healthy
GMO = Poison
Fake news
Re:Grocery retail is a notoriously thin-profit-mar (Score:5, Funny)
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Wait, why would they drench a plant in herbicide just before harvesting? You use the herbicide to kill off the weeds while the plant is growing, to reduce competition for resources. I can't think of a reason you'd need to really, really kill new weeds just before collecting the food from plants that are already fully grown and ripened.
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I'm not even going to bother debating this. Nobody will know the truth about any of it until long after we're all dead from old age, or Monsanto goes out of business, whichever comes first. Believe whatever the fuck yo
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Oh STFU. We're not talking about 'falling over dead from glyphosate poisoning' here, we're talking about strange chronic health problems that doctors can't figure out WHY you have them, but that started showing up in countries that use Roundup shortly after Roundup use started to skyrocket.
Sound just like the EM sickness and the anti-vaxxers. Oddly enough, those people can be found in clusters around Whole Foods locations. Clearly they know their market!
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You sound much like my ex-wife. She had a problem with gluten for a long time and for most of the time, doctors told her it was "all in her head" since tests for Celiac disease all came back negative. We finally figured out while we were married that she was gluten-sensitive (all gluten, not just wheat like you), and if she avoided eating it she did much better and didn't get migraines and have CFS like she did with gluten.
But the long-term fallout was that ended up distrusting the medical profession grea
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It sounds like you have a pretty good handle on the problem and a good approach to isolating the exact cause: create a theory and then attempt to falsify it. It'll be interesting to see how your experiment turns out.
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Everything you described suggests you have a food allergy to wheat. It is not unheard of for people who are allergic to wheat to have no reaction to spelt which is unsurprising since they are two separate species of plant. Wheat is one of the eight most common food allergies in the US (Milk, Egg, Fish, Shellfish, Tree Nuts, Peanuts, Wheat, Soybeans) and food allergies can manifest with numerous symptoms involving the bowels. Allergies can also develop later in life. The FDA requires spelt to be labeled as w
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I never thought she or others who claimed a problem were a nutjob, I was just issuing a warning that just because the medical establishment has some real problems with sometimes getting stuck on wrong and unscientific thinking for certain problems, or refusing to look at certain things, that this is no reason to jump to alternative medicine which has no scientific basis whatsoever, and that this is a real danger because people (and this is how alt-med thrives in fact) because people who have real problems w
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I'm sure it's physically possible to be allergic to wheat. At least it's not corn.
I have to avoid sugar, and it's not diabetes. Doctors don't have a clue.
Vital Wheat Gluten (Score:2)
Here read this:
http://www.newyorker.com/magaz... [newyorker.com]
TLDR its actually the substance vital wheat gluten which is added to all breads that is the most likely culprit. Perfectly explains the recent rise in this sort of sensitivity. I dont have it myself thank god, as i love all breads.
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Why should GMO producers charge 10% less? Perhaps the GMO has a benefit that makes it work more than its Non GMO counterpart.
The problem with labeling is that GMO is considered Scary. And having this warning label for GMO products is just to discourage people from using it without any Proven Science to back up why they shouldn't.
I would say that there should be tough standards so a product can post that it is non-GMO. Because chances are some of these GMO free products are still in some part made with GM
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If people don't want modern preservatives, BPA, MSG, GMO, or whatever today's vilified buzzword is, I'm generally ok with it.
What peeves me is when the primary difference is labelling and presentation. It's increasingly a problem everywhere, but Whole Foods does it more than anyone:
* Sugar => Evaporated Cane Juice
* Contains 10% whole grains => Made with 100% Whole Wheat (and other ingredients)
* Raisins => Gluten-free, Vegan, Kosher certified dried grapes
* High Fructose Corn Syrup => High Fructos
Re:Grocery retail is a notoriously thin-profit-mar (Score:5, Interesting)
I think there's a bit more to the Whole Foods business model. The high prices keep traffic low.
There's a local chain here called "Market Basket". It's a family run chain that was in the news a few years back when the employees went on strike to defend the ousted CEO. The customer service is excellent, the meat and produce good, and the prices are the lowest of any of the local chains. The problem is that it's always *packed* with shoppers. The aisles are congested, and sometimes I can't even find parking. Every day is Apocalypse preparation day there. At times I've had to wait twenty minutes for deli service, even though they've got five guys behind the counter working like sled dogs.
So if I need one or two things in a hurry I can't at the convenience store, I'll breeze into my local Whole Foods. I'll park withing fifty feet of the front door, walk right up to the meat counter and then right out to checkout, and there's seldom anyone in front of me. An expedition that would take over half an hour at Market Basket is done and dusted in five minutes at Whole Foods, and I pay for the privilege.
By any objective standard, Market Basket is a more sensible place to buy groceries; Consumer Reports ranks it second out of sixty American chains in their most recent evaluation; Whole Foods comes in #27, largely because of their obscene prices. But it's almost like they're in different businesses because they provide different customer experiences.
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The problem is that it's always *packed* with shoppers. The aisles are congested, and sometimes I can't even find parking. Every day is Apocalypse preparation day there. At times I've had to wait twenty minutes for deli service
Isn't all of that solved by just opening more locations?
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It's the old accounting koan: when a fixed costs variable and variable costs fixed?
When they're unit costs. The way you get prices down is to amortize your fixed costs like store rent over as many shoppers as possible. Even the aisles at MB are noticeably more narrow than typical.
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I think there's a bit more to the Whole Foods business model. The high prices keep traffic low.
Where do you live that is so hipster free? I live within walking distance of a Whole Foods and they have about 15 registers open all day and the checkout line alone takes 10+ minutes. I've been to one in DC that is worse, that has over 25 registers and the line to checkout goes to the back of the store. That DC Whole Foods uses the Fry's Electronics model for its express checkout. It has about 10 express checkout registers with a single line that goes pretty quickly, but is insanely long.
Re:Grocery retail is a notoriously thin-profit-mar (Score:5, Informative)
It's not better quality food anyways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_IoNQHMFLk
Captcha: amateurs
That video is about the difference between organic and non-organic. I agree there's no difference in taste.
Whole Foods isn't just about organic food. Sure they market it like that. There's a ton of bullshit in their marketing: natural = healthy, organic = healthy, additives = unhealthy and a whole host of other bullcrap. They sell homeopathic "medicine" FFS, of course they're full of bullshit!
The simple, gullible people of this world are easily sold on the fact that it's "natural" and "organic". They'll happily part with their money for suce nonsense. However, just because Whole Foods are pushing bullshit marketing doesn't necessarily mean the food isn't genuinely of a better quality.
Bbehind all the bullshit, the food is genuinely better quality. I only know the flagship store in Kensigton, London, so I don't know how that differes from US stores or "regular" London stores, but the quality to me seems undoubtably better.
Most of it seems down to freshness. The most well known "upmarket" food store over here is Waitrose, and the difference is unbelievable. I buy quail eggs from Waitrose and more often than not they are rubbery and have clearly been sitting on the shelf for too long. The air sac is larger which means they've been in storage for longer as the amount of air let inside the shell is directly proportionate to the time they've been exposed to air since hatching.
The differenct varieties of a single food item is much better in Whole Foods. In the south-east of England, fruit is the main food crop. If you go into a regular food store, you'll see the same old varieties sold over and over again. For apples, you get things like Royal Gala, Pink Lady, Golden Delicious, etc, etc. These are chosen because they are varieties that produce large fruit in abundance and make more produce per acre of land. The varieties that taste better aren't such abundant producers so they don't get stocked by food stores that focus on cheap prices.
The meats are better tasting, because they've been aged for longer in the right conditions. This costs more but produces a better product.
The fish is fresh. It's not been sitting around on a boat off-sea for weeks, it's often caught in dayboats which means it was caught within the last 48 hours. This costs more, but improves the product.
The wine is better because it's from smaller vinyards that focus on quality rather than mass production. The large food store chains can't do this because they need to reduce the number of suppliers they have to reduce overheads.
The fruit and veg is better because it's been picked wen ripe and transported quickly. Most food stores buy the food when it's unripe and have it ripen in slower means of transit.
None of this has to do with whether it's organic or not and in fact I ratrely buy organic from Whole Foods if I have the choice.
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organic = healthy,
And they're totally right about that! I used to only eat inorganic foods because they were cheap. I had almost no energy, was getting thin, and incredibly constipated. The doctor told me to start eating organic foods and I started feeling better in hours./P.
Interesting strategy (Score:5, Interesting)
I kind of figured Amazon would try to get into the grocery business in a big way but this is not the strategyI would have expected. It's an interesting approach from a business perspective. Whole Foods is struggling with cost and pricing but has a good brand and Amazon is amazing at the back end stuff. Might work brilliantly if they do it right. Might be a catastrophe. It's certainly well outside Amazon's wheelhouse to get into traditional retail in such a big way but it does give them immediate access to a high quality group of supplier relationships in groceries.
Re:Interesting strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
Whole Foods are also a national chain which might have been tempting. To get nationwide coverage in high income zip codes would otherwise have required multiple purchases.
That said, their stores are often pretty small compared to the bigger supermarkets which isn't great if you want to use them as local warehouses for Amazon Fresh, and they're also located in prime (read high-cost) locations, also unnecessary.
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I'd assume Amazon is going to be using WholeFoods as part of their AmazonFresh grocery delivery service, which is by definition an upscale service, so well matched to the prime/high-cost locations and WholeFoods demographic.
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[...] which is by definition an upscale service [...]
Safeway has home deliveries. No one would call Safeway upscale.
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Whole Foods really doesn't bring anything to the table that can't be done by any competent general grocery chain. They aren't even the best when it comes to the snooty foodie crowd. Whole Wallet just found a nice consumer niche full of suckers.
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What I meant is that grocery delivery (regardless of store) is an upscale service since one way or another you're going to pay extra for delivery. Most folk are struggling to make ends meet.
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You really don't necessarily pay extra for delivery. Safeway sends me coupons for free delivery at least once a month, so I could do all my grocery shopping online for free if I wanted. I only use it on rare occasions because I don't like bulk-shopping and prefer the in-store experience, plus I find online grocery shopping inconvenient to navigate when I'm not buying the same things all the time.
If you don't have a coupon, you're looking at $10 on a $150 order. A poor person may have to spend $5 on bus fare
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They are upscale compared to other more bargain supermarkets like Walmart and other discount supermarkets.
Anyhow, they're going after the Amazon demographic - the millennials who have never stepped foot in a supermarket and shop almost exclusively at Amazon. Everyone else who shops at supermarkets know they practically all have pickup or delivery services nowadays and uses them on occasion.
Re: Interesting strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
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In an economic downturn Whole Foods would be a boat anchor.
Grocery stores are practically recession proof. Everyone has to eat even when times are hard.
Re: Interesting strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
In an economic downturn Whole Foods would be a boat anchor.
Grocery stores are practically recession proof. Everyone has to eat even when times are hard.
True, but as disposable income shrinks, most people start to reconsider whether $6 a dozen cage free, no-stress, gluten free-fed, artisan handmade coop housed eggs are really worth the price premium over the $2 a dozen regular eggs.
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$2 for a dozen? Aldi is selling them for $0.79/dozen, and Kroger had a special recently for $0.55/dozen.
I've received eggs from friends who raise their own chickens to save money on that sort of stuff, and there definitely is a taste difference in favor of those eggs, but for us and most people, it's not worth paying any extra at the store except perhaps for special occasions. And by the time you get down to $2 eggs, I can't tell any difference at all between them and the $1 eggs you can get elsewhere.
Conspicious consumption (Score:2)
There is a demographic of people that "always" have money, and you want them as your customers. Do you think Rolex or Louis Vutton were really hurt that much during Great Recession of 2008? That is the market that Whole Foods tries to go after.
There is a big difference between selling a $1000 purse and selling a pint of ice cream for and extra few bucks. People buy a Rolex because they can show off how rich they are. Lot harder to do that with stuff you eat.
Luxury versus necessity (Score:2)
Grocery stores are practically recession proof. Everyone has to eat even when times are hard.
That's true to a degree but it is definitely not true for upscale grocery stores like Whole Foods. If people fall on hard times shopping at Whole Foods is among the first things to go by the wayside.
Re:Interesting strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not just that Amazon is good at the back end stuff like managing a supply chain. They've also been working on that "Amazon Go" thing where you have a store without cashiers or checkout lines. If they can bring a lot of automation and efficiency to Whole Foods, they could bring prices down quite a lot, which has been one of the principle complaints about Whole Foods.
Of course, that wouldn't necessarily be good for the people who work at Whole Foods...
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They've also been working on that "Amazon Go" thing where you have a store without cashiers or checkout lines. If they can bring a lot of automation and efficiency to Whole Foods, they could bring prices down quite a lot, which has been one of the principle complaints about Whole Foods.
If they get rid of workers and automate everything, they will have to come up with an algorithm to "accidentally" over weigh meat.
Alexa, I'd like 2 Apples (Score:5, Funny)
"Sure. That will be 47.25"
Wow, that's a great price. Make it 4!.
As "marketplace" stores cut back (Score:5, Interesting)
It'll be interesting to see what comes of this. At one point grocery stores used to be somewhat all-purpose in suburban areas, sometimes they'd have a decent sit-down restaurant, a section with more housewares, sometimes clothing or a limited amount of furniture, etc. We even had a chain around here that folded-into Smiths, then Fred Meyer, and ultimately Kroger that had a garden section similar to what you'd find at a Home Depot or Lowes. At some point most of the stores did-away with these extra features except for a few that retained "Marketplace" tacked-on after the name of the store, but even those usually limited themselves to a little bit of interior decor and some housewares like you'd find at a Bed Bath and Beyond. Everyone basically pushed to the bottom, basically going to mostly food.
Now that trend seems to be reversing. Local grocery stores are even opening wine bars inside, plus restaurants and the like. The amount of non-food stuff hasn't grown yet but I'm curious if it will, if grocers expect people to get tired of making multiple stops. With Target and Walmart having increased the size of their grocery departments this sort of expansion within grocery stores might be a way of fighting-back against Target and Walmart.
It'll be curious if Amazon uses the grocery stores as a means to receive Amazon purchases quickly without having to have a Prime membership; if ship-to-store for next-day pickup on things that normally would require several days becomes a thing. That might be one of the ways to appeal to customers that might be able to afford Whole Foods pricing.
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It'll be curious if Amazon uses the grocery stores as a means to receive Amazon purchases quickly without having to have a Prime membership
Not likely. Amazon really wants you to get a Prime membership.
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At least in Costco's case, their membership price is what's used to pay operating costs. It's the sales of merchandise that produce profit, but because the operating costs are covered, it doesn't take a lot of markup over cost to make that profit. In exchange it creates very loyal customers, so at least for now they're smart to not try to raise prices and upset the apple-cart.
Amazon's pricing is not based on that kind of model, as Prime does not account for enough revenue to pay for their operations.
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That's not an apples-to-apples comparison, however. Would Prime cover operations if everyone was required to have it to shop at Amazon? Because that's the Costco model.
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True, but in exchange I suspect more people would expect even better prices on things.
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I think I know what neighborhood in what city you live in. A barber-shop/hair-salon and cell-phone store went in where the gardening center used to be on the South side of the building, right?
Are you kidding me... (Score:2)
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Safeway: Your club card saved you 25%.
Me: Dammit. I need to save at least 40% to know I've played their stupid game well enough to get a fair price.
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Amazon's no checkout will be stopped by liquor law (Score:4, Interesting)
Amazon's no checkout will be stopped by liquor laws unless they have an person on staff to check id's also city's / states may try to pass laws like the ones that say you can't pump your own gas just to keep people working.
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That's easy to deal with. You must rope off a separate "liquor store" inside the larger store. People who are buying liquor have to check out there.
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I'm not sure if the powers that be would like this blatant end-around of their shitty laws or be enthralled at the communal hippie co-op that's replacing evil capitalist enterprises. I suspect that th
Pharmacy can't be members only liquor (some states (Score:2)
http://www.wisebread.com/7-thi... [wisebread.com]
Pharmacy can't be members only fed and liquor (some states).
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This is trivially solved by flagging liquor as special items that need a human ID checker. Target and other stores already do that already for self-checkout. Or just have customers' IDs/licenses tied to their Amazon account. It's all in their profile anyway.
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Plenty of solutions already in place for that.
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Or, depending where you live, grocery stores don't carry liquor, wine, or beer; I've actually never been to a whole foods that did have alcohol...does such a thing exist?
I've never seen one that didn't.
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The whole foods near you don't let you self serve growlers of beer?
Unions lose again (Score:3)
One of the last big union strongholds was grocery, with Kroger and Safeway/Albertsons employees being unionized. They've been facing stiff competition from non-union Walmart, Trader Joe's, Costco, and Target and some new non-union entrants like Aldi.
Now with Amazon 's big push into the grocery business, unions are setup for even bigger losses.
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One of the last big union strongholds was grocery, with Kroger and Safeway/Albertsons employees being unionized. They've been facing stiff competition from non-union Walmart, Trader Joe's, Costco, and Target and some new non-union entrants like Aldi.
Now with Amazon 's big push into the grocery business, unions are setup for even bigger losses.
I tell you, it's awful. If only there were a way that those employees could own part of the company for which they work - like, literally buy a piece of the company. Then they could have even more influence over the company than a union has. They could even buy and sell pieces of their company and others on an open market.
Sounds crazy.
Another reason (Score:2)
to avoid Whole Foods
I never liked the store anyway - too posh and the people attracted by this. There is now one in the city I live for half a year or so, I never went there.
Not a Health-Food store, but Trader Joe beats it by miles.
Amazon will destroy Whole Foods (Score:2)
Right now Whole Foods pays their employees a reasonable amount (as I understand), provides benefits and employee discounts. Good things, even if their prices are rather high.
I think Amazon is going to ruin Whole Foods as a company. The MBAs will squeeze out the soul along with more cash. Amazon will do the same thing that they do to their own employees: work them into the ground.
Nothing new there... I'll keep shopping at Trader Joe's, thanks.
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Amazon will do the same thing that they do to their own employees: work them into the ground.
From other comments in this thread, it sounds like people are expecting the opposite: they won't have to do any work at all! Because robots do that now.
End of shopping at WF for us (Score:2)
Bezos: "Alexa, buy me something from Whole Foods" (Score:2)
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What are you talking about?
I for one am looking forward to my free two-day shipping of $6 a bottle asparagus water.
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If they take your whole wallet, it's only because you're a sucker. You can get out of that place just fine if you are a miser. They just give you enough rope to hang yourself with. They know their target audience.
If you buy the overpriced organic kale with extra heavy metals included, then it's on you really.
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Not for whole foods.... you already knew, walking into the store, that every single retailer on the planet, was a cheaper buy :-). If you were looking for a cheaper choice, you would at least stop at Trader Joe's first.
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Walmart puts out what sells. If it doesn't sell, they don't put it out. It's pretty simple really. Because of this you can find yourself in the perverse position where you have to go to Walmart for that particular upscale item you like cause the other stores aren't selling it.
Was also surprised by their produce after I was forced to use their pick up service for awhile. That place is a bit less horrible when you distance yourself from the customers inside.
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They don't have the lowest prices on produce, dairy, or meat though.
Walmart doesn't but Sams does. 6lbs of 90/10 ground beef for under $3 per lb. Buy a pack of that, a pack of 2 chuck roasts, and a bag of frozen chicken breasts and me and my wife get a month's worth of meat for $50. For the chuck roasts Publix usually has a little bit better flavor, but ground beef is ground beef and you really can't beat the price.
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I still laugh at Organic Salt. Salt isn't Organic.
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I still laugh at Organic Salt. Salt isn't Organic.
There are no organic salts I know of considering the USDA classifies it as a mineral. There are companies with the word organic in their name which sell salt, but they aren't marketed as organic salt. Although I'm sure they are okay with misleading people into thinking the salt is organic.
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Was waiting for the tech down turn to end...didn't see this one coming.
More reasons (Score:2)
Whole Foods chain faces NYC probe after investigators found 'worst case of overcharges' [nydailynews.com]
Whole Foods drops security firm after Calif. store attack [ocregister.com]
Whole Foods goes 'full mafia' on 70-year-old woman [naturalnews.com]