I’m a little late in posting this, but I wanted to wait to see what would happen after the acquisition.

Monday, August 28, 2017 was the day Amazon officially acquired Whole Foods Market. Amazon was very clear that prices would be slashed.

“Whole Foods Market will offer lower prices starting Monday on a selection of best-selling grocery staples across its stores, with more to come,” the company said in a statement.

I was very worried about this take over.  My worries revolved around quality and customer service which are so very important to me.  I buy strictly organic when it comes to fruit and vegetables.  Would there be less organic produce?  Would the quality of produce suffer?   I often chat up the employees working in produce.  From what I’m told, even a lot of their fruit and veggies labeled as conventional are organically grown. That USDA Organic label is very expensive which is why many farmers choose to go without.  I guess I will find out on my next shopping trip.

Any canned goods I buy are organic and I look to make sure that the lining is non-BPA.  Whole Food’s 365 brands are top notch in my book and I buy them often. They are the equivalent  of the generic “store brand”  What was going to happen here?  Would their strict guidelines on non-BPA go away?

Fish and poultry were also a major concern of mine.  The fish I buy is wild caught, not farmed.  I must say however, that they have very strict guidelines on their farmed fish.

Many people have concerns about farm-raised seafood…for good reason! A lot of harm has been done by poorly managed seafood farms. That’s why we decided to do something about it. We do farmed better. Fresh or frozen, we know where all of our farm-raised seafood comes from, and require third-party verification of water quality and dozens of other quality standards, including what it was fed, and what it wasn’t. Bottom line, all our farmed seafood is Responsibly Farmed seafood.

Be that as it may, I still buy all wild caught seafood. Would Whole Foods continue to have a wide selection of wild caught fish or would there be more farm raised fish?

I make sure the poultry I buy is organic and free range.  It’s important to me how these chickens are raised and what they are fed.  Whole Foods has a strict 5-Step animal welfare rating  which I pay close attention to.  Again, that same question about standards.

Here’s what I found out.  When I went shopping this morning I anticipated sale signs to be all over the store.  To my surprise that was not the case.  In fact, none of the items that I typically buy were on sale.

Produce:  The only organic produce I saw on sale were tomatoes and avocados.  Some conventional produce seemed slightly lower.

Seafood:  A sight price reduction on farmed-raised, but wild caught prices remained the same.

Poultry: Organic, free range was status quo.  No price change.

At the check out line I was told that of the thousands of brands that they carry, only 75 items were on sale.  WOW!  No savings for me.  This was not what I expected at all. Maybe my fears were premature, but only time will tell.  After all it’s only been a week since the take over.