instead offers an online grocery solution with Amazon Fresh and
cashier-less grocery shopping with Amazon Go, which debuted in
December 2016.^103 In June 2017, Amazon acquired 460 stores in
wealthy neighborhoods by way of Whole Foods. While Amazon and
Whole Foods account for only 3.5 percent of U.S. grocery spending,
the cocktail of high-end grocery and high-tech delivery solutions bodes
a significant disruption in the sector. On the day the acquisition was
announced, Kroger stock was down 9.24 percent; United Natural
Foods, an organic distributor, was down 11 percent; and Target 8
percent.^104 Amazon will eat a lot of lunches.
Restaurants will suffer too, as meal prep at home will be made
easier by lightning-fast delivery. And yes, delivery services will take a
hit, like Instacart, whose spokesperson said that with the Whole Foods
acquisition, Amazon had “declared war on every supermarket and
corner store in America.”^105
Walmart
The biggest loser? Easy: Walmart. Walmart’s e-commerce growth
hurdle reaches beyond Seattle: a workforce that’s both underpaid and
lacking the skills to close the multichannel circle. Many of their
customers are that group you’ve wondered about, who don’t have
broadband or a smartphone. The wealthiest man in the twentieth
century mastered the art of minimum-wage employees selling you
stuff. The wealthiest man of the twenty-first century is mastering the
science of zero-wage robots selling you stuff.
The same day that Amazon bought Whole Foods, Walmart bought
Bonobos,^106 an online menswear retailer that had acquired brick-and-
mortar stores. Bonobos has a strong multichannel model—customers
are fitted on site, and clothes are later mailed. Similar to the Jet
acquisition, Walmart hopes to derive e-commerce ethos from the
smaller retailer, so as to compete against Amazon. Unlikely that
Bonobos will make much of a difference, given the scale of the
juggernaut.
Walmart is the largest grocery retailer in the United States, and the
Whole Foods acquisition is a major escalation in its grocery wars with