Once a pioneer of the organic foods movement, Whole Foods has more recently struggled to shed its image as too pricey, too upscale<br />and too out-of-touch with customers who want more natural foods at more affordable prices.<br />Armed with giant warehouses, shopper data, the latest technology<br />and nearly endless funds — and now with Whole Foods’ hundreds of physical stores — Amazon is poised to reshape an $800 billion grocery market that is already undergoing many changes.<br />Amazon recently began to creep into an important part of Walmart’s turf — low-income customers — when it slashed the price of its Amazon Prime<br />membership for people with electronic benefits transfer cards, which people on food stamps and other government assistance programs use.<br />“This shows that online is going to be very dominant in the grocery business —<br />and very quickly,” said Errol Schweizer, a former Whole Foods executive.<br />Amazon Deal for Whole Foods Starts a Supermarket War -<br />By RACHEL ABRAMS and JULIE CRESWELLJUNE 16, 2017<br />Shares of Walmart, Target, Kroger and Costco, the largest grocery retailers, all tumbled on Friday.<br />Kroger and Albertsons have bulked up their organic offerings, and organic food has been one of the strongest areas of growth in the grocery business: Last month, the Organic Trade Association announced<br />that sales of organics had increased by 8.4 percent to $43.3 billion, or more than 5 percent of grocery sales.<br />Aldi plans to invest $3.4 billion to grow from 1,600 stores to 2,500 stores by 2022, while Lidl,<br />which recently opened a handful of locations, plans to operate 100 by the middle of next year.
