Four Easy Ingredients to Make an Amazon-Whole Foods Souffle

A recipe for turning a $13.7 billion acquisition into something palatable for shareholders and customers.

A customer loads shopping bags into a vehicle outside a Whole Foods Market Inc. location in Naperville, Illinois, U.S., on Friday, June 16, 2017. Amazon.com Inc. will acquire Whole Foods Market Inc. for $13.7 billion, a bombshell of a deal that catapults the e-commerce giant into hundreds of physical stores and fulfills a long-held goal of selling more groceries.Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

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June 19, 2017 at 10:43 AM EDT

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If for some strange reason you were reading tech news this weekend, you likely ingested endless analysis of Amazon’s blockbuster announcement that it intends to acquire organic grocery chain Whole Foods Market Inc. The New York Times called it more evidence of Jeff Bezos’s prodigious tolerance for risk. Writing for VentureBeat, Fahim Naim, a former Amazon.com Inc. category manager, said Whole Foods stores could double as mini-fulfillment centers and hubs for Amazon Fresh. Consumer Reports said Amazon’s big opportunity is to use devices like the Echo and Dash Wand to make groceries easier to buy.

In the coming weeks, we’ll see whether the Trump administration, despite numerous job openings at the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission, will decide to throw obstacles in Amazon’s way. We’ll also find out soon whether any competing bids emerge for Whole Foods.

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