Amazon officially owns Whole Foods; here are the products that are getting marked down
Channel: New Video
Date: 2017-08-28

Amazon officially owns Whole Foods; here are the products that are getting marked down

Amazon (AMZN) has officially sealed the deal with Whole Foods (WFM), and the promised price cuts are already hitting grocery stores.

Bananas for 49 cents a pound, anyone? Marked down from 79 cents, that's more comparable to other supermarket chains. The organic variety goes for 69 cents a pound in a Manhattan store, down from Sunday's price of 99 cents a pound.

Just on Thursday, Amazon announced that all Whole Foods customers would immediately see "lower prices on a selection of best-selling staples across stores," after completion of the merger.

This includes discounts on Whole Foods' Whole Trade bananas, organic avocados, organic large brown eggs, organic "responsibly farmed" salmon and tilapia, organic baby kale and baby lettuce, animal-welfare-rated 85 percent lean ground beef, creamy and crunchy almond butter, organic Gala and Fuji apples, organic rotisserie chicken, "365 Everyday Value" organic butter and more, according to Amazon's press release.

Note: This chart is based on a CNBC survey of prices at New York's Upper East Side Whole Foods location. These are all of the items mentioned in Amazon's Friday press release.

Notably, many of the items Amazon said it was discounting require a "frequency of purchase," Raymond James analyst Aaron Kessler told CNBC on Friday. They aren't items like paper towels that you can stockpile, he added. "You have to buy a lot."

The Whole Foods store on New York's Upper East Side visited Monday also featured a display of Amazon Echo and Dot devices, marked down to $99.99 and $44.99 each, respectively. A banner hung above the table reading, "We're Growing Something Good. Whole Foods Market + Amazon." Time will tell what other Amazon merchandise starts to pop up in the grocery locations.

Nonetheless, industry watchers still wonder just how much Amazon is willing to foot the grocery bill at Whole Foods.

"There are certain areas where [Amazon] can cut, but there is a limit. If you cut too much, you will destroy the operating profit for Whole Foods," Kessler said.

CNBC visited the Whole Foods location on Friday, before the deal's closing.

At that time, organic avocados were selling for $2.99 apiece, organic baby kale and lettuces were priced at $3.99 a container, organic Gala apples were $2.99 per pound, and organic Fuji apples were $3.49 per pound. Whole Foods' 365-branded almond butter sold for $7.99 a jar, and animal-welfare-rated 85 percent lean ground beef was $6.99 per pound.

Come Monday, baby lettuce containers were reduced to $3.49, organic Gala apples were selling for $1.99 a pound and jars of 365-branded almond butter were a dollar cheaper, at $6.99 apiece. Amazon most significantly reduced the price of organic Fuji apples, by 43 percent, from $3.49 a pound to $1.99.