Whole Foods Market CEO Jason Buechel has taken on an expanded role at Amazon and will now lead the company’s Worldwide Grocery Stores (WWGS) division, which encompasses Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh in addition to Whole Foods. The news comes as a Philadelphia store has become the first Whole Foods in the country to unionize.
Buechel’s promotion follows the November 2024 departure of his former boss Tony Hoggett, who left Amazon to take on the COO role at food delivery startup Wonder.
In his new expanded role, Buechel will report directly to Worldwide Amazon Stores CEO Doug Herrington. Claire Peters, VP of Retail, and Anand Varadarajan, VP of Product and Technology, will both continue in their current roles and will now report to Buechel. Peters leads Amazon Fresh, Amazon Go and Grocery Partnerships, and Anand leads all product and technology efforts for WWGS.
Buechel has been with Whole Foods since 2013, serving as COO prior to taking on the CEO role in September 2022. “In his time as CEO, Jason has unlocked our ability to make high-quality natural and organic groceries more affordable and accessible to customers, helping Whole Foods achieve record sales growth and expand to over 535 locations,” said Herrington in a statement.
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Amazon Continues to Evolve its Grocery Offering
Amazon has struggled to find its footing in grocery since its 2017 $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods, although Whole Foods itself has continued to perform strongly. In 2022, Amazon unified its grocery business, including Whole Foods, under the WWGS banner. Since that transition the company has made a number of efforts to streamline and evolve its grocery business, including:
- The introduction of a grocery subscription offering, which Herrington said is getting a “fantastic response from customers”;
- The introduction of a new design for its Amazon Fresh stores after previously putting new builds for that chain on hold in 2023;
- A range of new fulfillment and delivery options to make grocery shopping faster and more efficient across all of its banners;
- Trials of a number of newer grocery formats, including a store in Philadelphia that sits adjacent to a Whole Foods and carries products not sold at that chain; and
- A new experiment in Phoenix that allows customers to shop tens of thousands of grocery items, including fresh groceries, alongside millions of Amazon.com products and have them delivered all together within hours.
“Since creating a single WW Grocery Stores organization in 2022, we have made notable progress in our vision to make grocery shopping simpler, faster and more affordable for customers,” said Herrington. “We’ve taken steps to integrate our huge grocery selection across our broader logistics network and create a more seamless experience for customers, especially Prime members. This work will continue under Jason’s leadership. I am incredibly energized by our momentum in grocery.”