Uh oh. Amazon is opening up a new chain of grocery stores

boing
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Well, at a WF365 you’d expect (to offer crates of 18 cracked eggs to) customers polled as having always bought eggs in order to be cracking the eggshell rather than for inexpensive protein, for which the demo. have consuming caterpillars or larvae or other things that mapped really far away from bushmeat before their terrarium became packaged for sunroom use. At least I hope the redolent smell of fresh local AI food is metastasizing (sizing? huh. metastasteaming-off and metastapapertiger-ing calls for homemade edibles anyhow) to the buyer’s desk nicely.
[Looks at the black racks again.]
Without The Matrix set dress. [Customers wearing spandex tuned to a dead CRT channel and wraparound glasses walk around all visible corners in lockstep.]
And costumes. [Lights fail seamlessly.] Oh come on.

…what’s an Arlodon? And yes, of course if it were 2% more convenient -all- the customers would just hijack the teambuilding 9-person bike from its anticonvention-touring shed.

Like Marvel and D.C.; no crossovers

…not before 1992. Or much before Square-Enix. Hey, remind me of the sort of date when 72,000lpi art will match usual monitor resolution, cementing the retrosingularity (where we have to print out human eyes to enjoy fine art prints and comics.)

nodolra> good bread has a shelf life of about a day
Okay, I’m with you on the explainer bit, but does this mean you were with the refrigerated, sprouted seed bread people? Because that was a mycorizome appreciation too far for me to make. Dave’s Killer Bread is a neat side effect, I think. [Audience-Facing Signboard: How wrong, folks?]

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This all makes more sense if you see Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods as a data play. The specialty grocery space is where food innovation happens. Whatever is differentiating a winning grocery in the conventional space is five years behind the tiny organic food co-op down the street.

So Whole Foods just has to keep doing what it’s been doing, while Amazon crunches all that data to outcompete conventional groceries through better forecasting and trend capture.

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Because Carmack’s non-shovelware emporium, I guess. Like they’re going to turn around and be grocers and spacers and omnidirectional treadmill dealers with an engine (3D toolchain) to sell the next week. Also I think ah, more people are wary of feeding foreign influence peddlers with no more time to farm in the US. And Ross De Vol (thanks for that DeVo tune earlier, peeps inter. alia) also has a report I saw at brook.gs (Brookings Inst.) a few days ago (via Steve Case twitterverses) about entrepreneurial digs. That’s a neat idea that fast liquor fashion and J&J are making it not suck to do retail, though. [Cue Quick’rLiq’r private equity in…]

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Is this a Soopy’s? Because they’re fucking fantastic.

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That doesn’t look like my whole foods.

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Just stopped by a Whole Foods yesterday. Beautiful store. Shelves looked too be fully stocked and I found everything on my list. Overall a very pleasant experience. Maybe the location I visited was an outlier.

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Sounds like it’s time for some grocery/food co-ops to come to some towns where all this is happening.

And folks, if you can, if it is at all possible for you, please please consider giving your patronage to a co-op. Please consider withdrawing your consent and participation from this and other* special kinds of Amazon bullshit being served to us in the name of innovation and low price points.

A list of food co-ops in the U.S. and elsewhere:
http://www.coopdirectory.org/directory.htm
https://www.ncg.coop/find-co-op
https://www.fci.coop/co-op-directories/

Find some like-minded friends and start a food co-op!
https://www.grocer.coop/library/start-a-food-coop

Power to the people!
We grow the food, we sell the food, we eat the food!

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I wish WinCo was closer to me than it is. I like their store.
In parts of the midwest I highly recommend Hy-Vee.

ETA well those are not Co-ops but employee owned big chains which is also a good choice.
The actual co-op in my area is even more hipster, granola hippie, and expensive than whole foods.

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Karl Marx did.

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If your complaint is re: prices, then… have you talked with your area co-op management to give them your feedback?

Like, asked them “why are your prices higher?”

Or “do you you carry a cheaper ‘store brand’ alternative?” (mine has “Field Day” and it’s usually the cheapest version on the shelves apart from on-sale items)

Or "do you have or are you willing to stock food for normal people who aren’t part of the

demographic?"

You can ask “if I become a member, can I run for a position on the co-op board and work to bring prices down for staple items like some bulk department items, including coffee, sugar, beans, rice [whatever your basics list includes, no idea]?”

Whole Foods, which here in Austin we have been calling “Hole Foods” or “Whole Paycheck” for ever so many years, has always had the highest prices around prior to its purchase by Amazon except for its occasional loss-leaders in the produce department.

The current Amazon model poorly paid (until late 2018), mistreated, disempowered, fungible workers and deaf management looking to Increase Shareholder Value while delivering crappy service, bad product and zero accountability is a plain case of “you get what you pay for [and less]” on the consumer side.

Choosing to withdraw one’s participation in Amazon’s bullshit, or in sweatshop labor goods, or clearcutting of irreplaceable habitat for endangered species and people etc. is not always convenient, cheap, easy.

It is doable though.

Is it worth doing?
I suppose the answer depends on what one’s goals, large and small, really are.

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They have their market here in Seattle so I doubt it would change. The only place themselves in the richer neighborhoods.
I will say for some things like the deli/prepared meals they are not so bad and I do like Whole Paycheck for the pizza and sandwiches.

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The Central Co-Op?

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PCC  

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Oh of course. I mostly stopped driving for the last couple years and PCC is outside of my convenience zone. So I forgot it exists. Back when I drove I went to PCC on occasion. I was ambivalent toward it. When I bought something there I generally liked it. My recall is that it was less expensive than Whole Foods.

I found the Central Co-Op to be more expensive than other options and frequently found the products and deli food to be so “healthy” that it was inedible (and I am Ok with stuff being a little hippie-ish). But they always seem busy, so to each their own.

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The hippie doesn’t bother me as much as the woo aisle.

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Yes, I am a hard pass on the woo as well. I don’t recall such an isle but I probably just ignored it hard enough to not see it. I bet they have those salt lights that are supposed to fix the ions?

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PCC isn’t as bad as Whole Paycheck as the store footprint is way smaller but the supplements aisle is still eyeroll inducing.

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Oh yes. Those… Good cure for when money is burning your pocket. But that is about it.

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I spoke too soon. :frowning_face:

Looks like Whole-azon has managed to raise worker pay but cut workers’ hours to match pre-raise operating budgets. Some workers are taking on second jobs to make ends meet, according to those interviewed here:

justsaynottothecapitalistmachine

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