Amazon Is Buying Whole Foods For $13.7 Billion, Will Soon Own The Entire World
CNBC- Amazon said Friday it plans to acquire Whole Foods Market for $42 a share, in a deal valued at $13.7 billion. Whole Foods’ John Mackey will remain CEO of the grocery store chain after the deal closes, and the store will continue to operate under the Whole Foods brand.
Amazon’s offer represents a 27 percent premium to Whole Foods’ closing price on Thursday. The deal is expected to close in the second half year. “This partnership presents an opportunity to maximize value for Whole Foods Market’s shareholders, while at the same time extending our mission and bringing the highest quality, experience, convenience and innovation to our customers,” Mackey said in a statement.
Well the grocery store business is a wrap. The owners of Stop & Shop, Trader Joe’s, and Shop Rite can pick up their participation trophies on the way out and turn off the lights. Even my beloved Costco has to be shaking in their boots. Amazon done formed a #SuperTeam and Whole Foods is Kevin Durant. You may not like them, but you have to respect them. In fact the biggest knocks on Whole Foods was that it was expensive and the people that went there fucking suuuuuucked. But soon you won’t even have to deal with those assholes or live in the same state as a Whole Foods to get their food. Just slap an Amazon logo on it, make the prices as low as humanly possible with free 2 day delivery (*Prime Members only!) and you can make any product likable. Don’t believe me? Look at your Amazon cart and recent orders. How much of that stuff did you REALLY need? Told you so. Trust me, you will be ordering organic kelp ice cream in no time.
Sure it’s kind of scary when one company becomes this powerful. If I woke up tomorrow and learned that Amazon bought South America and some Caribbean islands to be named later, I wouldn’t be shocked in the least. I wish I could bet somewhere that Amazon will be its own sovereign nation with a flag and everything within the next 10 years. Jeff Bezos is ready to finish what Hank Scorpio started and become the world’s pre-eminent businessman/supervillain. While that may frighten some people, you have to look at the bright side. We will soon be able to tell Alexa to order us food, new batteries for the remote, shampoo, and a toy to shut the kids up from the couch while we are watching the game and those sons of bitches will deliver it by drone within 20 minutes. Not so bad, right? The future is here. And it damn near broke Jim Cramer.
We should have known this was coming. Once Amazon started opening brick and mortar book stores, you could tell they were going for peoples’ throats like Michael Corleone during the Baptism scene of The Godfather.
People forget that Amazon started as a book store, killed a shit ton of physical book stores, then moved on to other industries. Now they are bringing them back just to show off. Absolutely diabolical. And I, for one, welcome our new commerce overlords.
Now lets pour one out and take a moment to remember those that will soon no longer be with us.