AP
Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey held a town hall on Friday with Amazon CEO Jeff Wilke, at which he reassured Whole Foods employees that the $13.7 billion merger was going to be nothing short of "so incredibly wonderful."
- The partnership was love at first sight, but: "[L]ike an old traditional marriage, where there are all kinds of rules and chaperones, we can't consummate the marriage, until we're actually officially hooked up..."
- Mackey said that Amazon is "not stupid enough to go change" the brand that Whole Foods has built, but that "over time, there could be other formats that evolve that — that might — wouldn't be branded Whole Foods Market, potentially, wouldn't be our standards."
- Changes, via Mackey: "[T]hey are more customer-centric than we are. ... I think, sometimes, our company's gone a little bit too much team member focus at the expense of our customers."