So can you buy Amazon gift cards anywhere Carding
Even in a store?
Not directly, but indirectly. The $5 card you buy at a grocery store for 5 bucks can go to Amazon for an additional 20 bucks, or something like that.
I asked Whole Foods if they could do the same, but they said “Amazon can put all of our product on their platform.” What does that mean, exactly?
Amazon can send the products you buy at Whole Foods to your mailbox and you wouldn’t even know. You would just get the $5 or $10 gift card in the mail a month or so later.
The crazy thing is Whole Foods has become a pretty significant retailer for Amazon and they’re only getting started.
Because of Amazon’s reach, Whole Foods got in the business of selling products like alcohol.
Check out the results of one person in Laredo, Texas. He actually writes for a company called The Rum Society and sells “proper liquors.” It’s a craft spirits company based out of Spain.
The guy himself came to the Whole Foods in Laredo to pick up a box of its “Niagara” brand scotch and one of the bottles was scanned as being from Laredo, Texas.
How’s that possible?
Well the Apple computer market grew so much at one point that the company’s product was named after the location of an Apple dealership in the UK, called Oxford Circus. This is why Apple now calls the iPhone 5c “London”.
Stores like Whole Foods can also be used as a form of distribution for products like hard goods.
If a company manufactures hard goods like sunglasses, bikes or camping gear, it has to ship them out from their distribution center, warehouse or factory.
And there is no easy way to do this without distributing the items across many different stores.
Whole Foods has stores where the same products are sold day in and day out. This reduces the number of miles you’d need to drive to get products to your doorstep, and also makes it easy to drop off items at Whole Foods and have them ready for pickup.
All of these factors make Whole Foods the perfect place for Amazon to pick up its hard goods because it needs product distribution without having to actually touch any of the product.
With Whole Foods, Amazon is getting thousands of products into millions of people’s homes.
Amazon Prime members actually get a $10 credit on their Amazon Whole Foods account with every $100 they spend at Whole Foods. They can use that $10 for two weeks worth of groceries (assuming their groceries are in your grocery delivery options).
How are Whole Foods stores changing?
I find that Whole Foods stores are starting to look less like stores in general.
There are more frequent products on the shelves, all the way from produce to meat to canned goods. You can get things like frozen meals, snacks, or even eggs and milk delivered to your home.
I found one of the Whole Foods in Chicago where all the produce was in reusable bags. I loved it.
In-store Wi-Fi is a priority now, as well.
Instead of advertising last night’s Oscar nominations, stores will now talk about how great their grocery delivery options are.
I’ve started to see some Whole Foods stores equipped with stuff like a drying rack, a mini-fridge, self-service salad bar, juicer, smoothie maker, and etc.
And the stores are getting cleaner as well. There are now organic pizza places and cereal bars.
Yes, there is still a Whole Foods in Santa Monica where you can go pick up candles, yoga mat samples and other weird, weird things you can’t get at Amazon.
But people are no longer treating Whole Foods like a special shopping experience like they once did.
I’ve started seeing a lot more Amazon branded products. For example, if you walk into one of these Whole Foods stores, they don’t sell books. They sell Kindles and Kindles accessories.
The Whole Foods I shop at in Santa Monica actually has a sign above the hand soap that says “Customers get 10% off
