How The Rich Get Their Kicks: Micro-Crimes Against Big Corporations
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Amazon BAILS on its cashierless grocery stores, betting you'd rather have crazy-fast delivery
What once cost Amazon over $13 billion is now turning into a big headache for the tech company.
Back in 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods for a price tag of $13.7 billion with the intention of making its own brick-and-mortar grocery stores under the brands Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go.
'Fresh groceries now make up nine of the top 10 most-ordered items.'
Amazon Go was meant to be the future: a cashierless and seamless Amazon experience where shoppers simply scan on their way out. In fact, the stores mirror a mid-2000s IBM commercial about online commerce.
By 2023, expansion had been slowed, with some locations closing, CoStar reported at the time, and Amazon taking out a $720 million impairment charge.
On Tuesday, Amazon announced it is fully closing all Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go locations. Although some will be retrofitted to become Whole Foods Market stores, Amazon is making a big shift toward grocery delivery.
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Amazon said in its press release that it already offers grocery deliveries in 5,000 cities and towns, with several thousand receiving same-day deliveries. Same-day service seems to be the company's core expansion project for 2026.
The shift appeared to be a profit-driven move after sales through same-day deliveries increased by 40x since January 2025.
"Fresh groceries now make up nine of the top 10 most-ordered items in areas where perishable groceries are available for Same-Day Delivery," Amazon explained.
At the same, Amazon says it will be "taking convenience even further" with the introduction of an "ultra-fast" delivery option that brings thousands of "essential items," including fresh food, to customers in 30 minutes or less. The offer is essentially a mobile convenience store experience.
While Fresh and Go may have not been the shining stars Amazon hoped they would be, its investment in Whole Foods Market has certainly paid off. The company boasted 40% sales growth since 2017, year-over-year increases in customer traffic, and expansion from around 460 locations in 2017 to over 550 currently.
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Make French Fries Great Again
If Trump can take small steps toward making our food real again, Americans will be able to have their French fries and eat them too.Outgoing Whole Foods CEO issues stark warning about encroachment of socialists: 'They're taking over everything'
Outgoing Whole Foods CEO John Mackey issued a dire warning about the encroachment of socialism in an interview this week.
What did Mackay say?
Mackey announced last September that he was retiring from managing the supermarket chain that he co-founded more than 40 years ago. But before his departure from Whole Foods at the end of August, Mackey is warning Americans about socialism.
"My concern is that I feel like socialists are taking over," Mackey said on the "Reason" podcast this week.
"They're marching through the institutions. They're taking over everything," he added. "They're taking over education. It looks like they've taken over a lot of the corporations. It looks like they've taken over the military. And it's just continuing."
Describing himself as a "capitalist at heart," Mackey blamed socialists and socialism for eroding many of the liberties that Americans once universally believed were fundamental to our way of life.
"I believe in liberty and capitalism. Those are my twin values," he said. "And I feel like, you know, with the way freedom of speech is today, the movement on gun control, a lot of the liberties that I've taken for granted most of my life, I think, are under threat."
What is the background?
Mackey is no stranger to warning Americans about the perils of socialism.
In a 2020 interview, for example, Mackey described socialism as the "path of poverty."
"They talk about 'trickle-down wealth,' but socialism is trickle-up poverty," Mackey said. "It just impoverishes everything."
Capitalism, on the other hand, is "greatest thing humanity has ever created," according to Mackey.
"Capitalism is the greatest thing humanity's ever done. We've told a bad narrative, and we've let the enemies of business and the enemies of capitalism put out a narrative about us that's wrong, it's inaccurate — and it's doing tremendous damage to the minds of young people," Mackey said.
"The Marxists and socialists, the academic community is generally hostile to business. It always has been. This is not new," he explained.
Anything else?
In his retirement from Whole Foods, Mackey is likely to be more outspoken about politics. In fact, he told Reason that he will no longer be "muzzled."
"Pretty soon, you’re gonna hear about ‘Crazy John’ who’s no longer muzzled," he joked.
Whole Foods argues it has a constitutional right to ban its employees from wearing 'Black Lives Matter' masks
Whole Foods says that it has the constitutional right to ban its employees from wearing "Black Lives Matter" masks while on the job, Bloomberg reports.
The business says that a federal labor board will effectively violate the First Amendment if it attempts to force the company to allow the polarizing message on employee masks.
What are the details?
National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo filed a complaint in November that the company infringed on federal law by enforcing a workplace dress code that banned "Black Lives Matter" masks. The board's complaint alleged that the company illegally prevented several of its employees from displaying "Black Lives Matter" logos on masks and apparel and punished those who flouted the company-wide regulation.
The complaint, according to reports, alleged that Whole Foods prevented its employees from engaging in "concerted activities for their mutual aid and protection."
In a Dec. 17 filing, Whole Foods stated that National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo attempted to "compel" speech, violating the First Amendment and "unlawfully infringing upon and/or diluting [Whole Foods'] protected trademarks" by attempting to force the company to permit political messages through its uniforms.
The company argued in its filing that the National Labor Relations Act does not offer protection for "political and/or social justice speech."
"Whole Foods contends that Section 7 of the NLRA, which protects employees’ right to take collective action related to working conditions, doesn’t extend to workers’ BLM messages, which it calls 'political and/or social justice speech,'" Bloomberg's report added. "The company’s filing argues that 'BLM' and related phrases 'are not objectively understood to relate to workplace issues or improving working conditions at WFM’s retail grocery stores' or employment terms and conditions in general.
“Employees do not have a protected right under Section 7 of the Act to display the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ or ‘BLM’ in the workplace,” the company’s attorneys wrote in the filing.
The complaint and response are set for a March trial.
A spokesperson for the Amazon-owned chain grocery store told the New York Post that the company dress code "bans any visible slogans or logos that aren't company-related and does not single out the 'Black Lives Matter' movement."
"Our dress code policy is designed to ensure we are giving Team Members a workplace and customers a shopping experience focused entirely on excellent service and high-quality food,” the spokesperson said in the company's statement. “We do not believe we should compromise that experience by introducing any messages on uniforms, regardless of the content, that shift the focus away from our mission.”
A spokesperson for the National Labor Relations Act did not respond to the Post's request for comment.
Whole Foods CEO blasts socialism, explains how universities corrupt young people: 'Trickle-up poverty'
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey blasted socialism during a recent interview, explaining such economic policies cause increased poverty.
During a discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute on Tuesday, Mackey did not mince words — he said socialism is the "path of poverty."
"They talk about 'trickle-down wealth,' but socialism is trickle-up poverty," Mackey explained. "It just impoverishes everything."
Mackey explained that capitalism, on the other hand, is the "greatest thing humanity has ever created," and blamed intellectuals in universities for corrupting young people into thinking that capitalism is bad.
"Capitalism is the greatest thing humanity's ever done. We've told a bad narrative, and we've let the enemies of business and the enemies of capitalism put out a narrative about us that's wrong, it's inaccurate — and it's doing tremendous damage to the minds of young people," Mackey said.
"The Marxists and socialists, the academic community is generally hostile to business. It always has been. This is not new," he explained.
Socialism is favored by far-left progressive politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Mackey went on to explain that not all progressivism is bad, but that socialism must be abandoned.
"We have to recognize that some of the progressive insights are important and they shouldn't go away, but we can't throw out capitalism and replace it with socialism, that will be a disaster," Mackey said, Just The News reported.
"Socialism has been tried 42 times in the last 100 years, and 42 failures, it doesn't work, it's the wrong way. We have to keep capitalism, I would argue, we need conscious capitalism," he continued.
According to Mackey, capitalism and business innovation overall is responsible for increased living conditions worldwide, has increased global literacy rates, and is even responsible for increasing life expectancy.
Business, therefore, should be evaluated "in terms of its value-creation," Mackey said.
"For its customers, and all the jobs that it creates for its employees and the residual or tangential effects that happen when it trades with suppliers, who also trade for voluntary reasons — they're benefitting and they're prospering as a result," the businessman explained.
Whole Foods, which was bought by Amazon in 2017, employs about 100,000 people, Mackey said.
John Mackey, Whole Foods Market CEO on Conscious leadership | LIVE STREAM youtu.be
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