The Friday Checkout: Amazon taps Whole Foods leadership for grocery growth — finally

Grocery Dive reported the development on 2025-06-13. With a newly restructured grocery executive team that has Whole Foods’ CEO at the helm, Amazon is gunning for grocery success. But why didn’t it bring in the specialty grocer sooner?

The report places the news in a wider commercial context. The Friday Checkout is a weekly column providing more insight on the news, rounding up the announcements you may have missed and sharing what’s to come. When Amazon purchased Whole Foods Market back in 2017, it was a safe assumption that the specialty grocer’s image would morph to reflect Amazon’s business.

For the food sector, the practical implications extend beyond the immediate announcement. Now, however, the tables are turning — Amazon seemingly wants to be more like Whole Foods. Amazon has spent years finding its footing in an attempt to get its own grocery empire off the ground — particularly with its traditional grocery chain Amazon Fresh — but nothing has wowed the industry or shoppers. And while Amazon Fresh hasn’t indicated that it plans to become.

Attention now turns to how companies, customers and regulators respond. Though Amazon established a single grocery entity back in 2022, Whole Foods and Amazon’s supermarket operations still ran fairly separately. This separation was fine for Whole Foods’ growth, but Amazon continued to play whack-a-mole with store openings and closures for Amazon Fresh.