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Let's put it this way. I covered this industry for like 20 years. Up until about seven years ago, it was the most dull issue in the world to cover!

John Springer is the executive editor of Winsight Grocery Business, a trade publication about the grocery industry.

He says supermarkets are changing, and the changes are accelerating, and the companies with more resources and better technology are winning out.

We're getting to wear scale and efficiency are more important than ever, and you can kind of see a future coming where there's bigger, more powerful, more automated, companies doing more, and probably a little bit less on those guys who can't afford to kind of play in that game.

Wire scale and efficiency becoming more important, because of Amazon.

In 2017, Amazon entered the grocery business by tossing whole foods in its shopping cart.

Amazon spent more than $13 billion to buy this 40-year-old supermarket chain, known for its organic merchandise, and at times, its sky-high prices.

In the grocery world, the purchase was a cataclysmic event.

Are people in the grocery business scared of what Amazon's going to do just because it's eaten up so many other businesses?

Yeah, I mean, the acquisition of whole foods was the alarm bell that kind of started all these multi-billion dollar investments in digital grocery capabilities.

It was like, oh my god, we've got to do something about this.

The COVID pandemic shifted the industry's focus toward food delivery, which only played further into Amazon's strengths.

And now, people in the world of groceries, people on Wall Street, just people in general, are extremely curious about Amazon supermarket ambitions, given the company's habit of taking a wrecking ball to any market it gets involved with.

Everything is done differently today because of Amazon, and the grocery industry is one of the last industries to come under that influence.

But hold on a second. Let's not put the shopping cart before the horse. What about the company Amazon acquired? It's been around for a lot longer than Amazon has, and it's got a saga all its own.

How exactly did one health food store in Texas manage to revolutionize the entire grocery universe? And how did this hippie-friendly organization end up hitching its cart to Jeff Bezos?

And what role will this unholy marriage play in the new grocery revolution? Will it be a supermarket sweep or a cleanup on aisle three?

I'm Seth Stevens. Welcome to Thrilling Tales of Modern Capitalism.

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