Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods last year was a jarring mismatch of corporate ideals: a company at the vanguard of quick and easy consumerism taking over an upmarket supermarket chain with such an absolute commitment to quality that it went by the nickname “Whole Paycheck”.
The Whole Foods deal gave Jeff Bezos little more than a beachhead in Britain, but Amazon’s chief is now gearing up for a full invasion.
The US giant has hired property agents to search for up to 200 sites for Amazon Go, a new convenience store using cutting-edge technology to dispense with the need for checkouts.
Meanwhile, it is also understood to be considering an offer to snap up a large block of bigger stores to expand Whole Foods in the event that regulators force Sainsbury’s and Asda to sell supermarkets to their rivals as the price of their proposed merger.
