[ethbro]

Or, Amazon + Whole Foods can afford to run less profitably than Whole Foods alone... in WF's core in-store grocery business.

Because Amazon can better monetize WF: backing with Amazon's logistics chain, expanding grocery delivery, cross-marketing with customer's existing Amazon purchases, and using WF's real estate for warehousing stock closer to affluent customers for one hour deliveries.

I absolutely agree they'll be tempted to squeeze costs, but I think there's a viable financial option to run WF as-is and still accrue benefits to the greater-Amazon.