ML-Implode News - Amazon Takeover of Whole Foods Puzzlingly Missing Any Economies of Scale

If Amazon.com Inc hopes to revolutionize grocery delivery, then its bid to buy Whole Foods Market Inc for $13.7 billion will be just the start of a long and costly process. The e-commerce giant would need to add a large network of specialized grocery distribution warehouses, former AmazonFresh employees and logistics experts said. This is something Wal-Mart Stores Inc and other competitors have already done. Whole Foods, with a relatively small distribution footprint of its own, does little to change the picture for Amazon, they said.
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Whole Foods has over 1 million square feet of warehouse space for distribution to its markets, and a chunk of its inventory goes straight from suppliers to stores, MWPVL said. "It's a peanut. It's nothing," MWPVL President Marc Wulfraat said of Whole Foods' distribution
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Even using Whole Foods stores to provide food for delivering to nearby urban shoppers would have hard limits, since many outlets lack the floor space to handle thousands of online orders.

"It's a space issue for stuff coming through. It's a labor issue for people tripping over each other," said Tom Furphy, former vice president of consumables and AmazonFresh, and now chief executive of Consumer Equity Partners. There would also be a risk that "the quality starts to go down because the e-commerce orders are getting better product."

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Amazon Takeover of Whole Foods Puzzlingly Missing Any Economies of Scale