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Food

Here's What's Already Cheaper at Whole Foods after the Amazon Deal

Cheaper avocados! And if you've ever wanted to see the Amazon logo rendered in raw ground beef, you're in luck, Whole Foods shoppers.
Hilary Pollack
Los Angeles, US

In case you were wondering how long it would take before you'd start seeing results of Amazon's recently approved acquisition of Whole Foods, the answer is "like, right now."

In addition the uniquely meaty merger of visual branding seen above—a photo caught at an LA-area Whole Foods location by USA Today's Los Angeles bureau chief Chris Woodyard—prices are already starting to drop on many of Whole Foods' most popular items.

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Yesterday marked Amazon's first day as the owner of the massive grocery chain, and Bloomberg ran some anecdotal but still staggering numbers on just how quickly prices dropped under Jeff Bezos's deal-loving corporation. Some were decreased by as much as 43 percent.

At a midtown Manhattan Whole Foods, avocados would run you $2.79 each as of last week; on Monday, they were just $1.99—a 29 percent change. Also significantly cheaper: apples (the per-pound price of organic Fuji apples dropped by 43 percent), bananas (30 percent and 38 percent cheaper for organic and conventional bananas, respectively), organic rotisserie chicken, almond butter, and yes, organic baby kale. Locations in San Francisco and Seattle saw similar price drops for these items, which were also marked with brightly colored signs noting that the marriage of "Whole Foods + Amazon" was responsible for the changes. You can see Bloomberg's full chart of price drops here.

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Ground beef (well, actually, "animal-welfare-rated 85 percent lean ground beef") also dropped significantly in price, from $6.99 per pound to just $4.99 per pound, which might be why that LA-area Whole Foods made a point of noting Amazon's logo in their display of that particular product.

A spokesperson for Whole Foods told MUNCHIES, "The price cuts are permanent and customers will see additional lowering of prices in the coming weeks and months. This is just the beginning." However, no word yet on whose idea the beefy Amazon logo was.

Soon, Amazon Prime members will receive even more benefits when they shop at Whole Foods, including in-store savings and free home delivery in certain cities. As for concerns of global consumer-market takeover and a singularity-level monopoly on Amazon's behalf over everything from our food supply to our media to our electronics and personal care items, well, we'll worry about that later! Cheap avocados, guys!

The potential repercussions of the merger have yet to be fully revealed, but for now, you'll see them at the checkout when they ring up your smoothie ingredients. Whole Foods is still far from being the most cost-effective supermarket in the game, but tides seem to be turning under Amazon. Might be time to change Whole Foods' nickname of "Whole Paycheck" to the more accurate "the Vast Majority of Your Paycheck with a Little Left Over for Late-Night Amazon Prime Impulse Purchases."