GeekWire Podcast: We roamed the aisles at Whole Foods to understand Amazon’s grocery strategy

What will Amazon do with Whole Foods, and what will the $13.7 billion deal mean for the company, retailers, and customers? Now that the acquisition is complete, the answers to those questions are becoming more clear.

GeekWire’s Taylor Soper and I have been walking the aisles at Whole Foods Market stores in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle off and on for the past four days — checking prices, chatting with people in the stores, and generally getting a boots-on-the-ground understanding of the biggest deal in the tech giant’s history.

We talk about what we’ve learned in this special edition of the GeekWire Podcast, starting with a detailed breakdown of the price reductions that Amazon made on its first day as the new Whole Foods owner. We also discuss the implications for the grocery industry and Whole Foods delivery partner Instacart, and how Amazon could incorporate its Alexa voice assistant and Prime membership program into the experience.

Listen to the podcast here, download the MP3, and see the behind-the-scenes video below.

A quick postscript: Since we recorded this episode, Taylor actually bumped into Whole Foods CEO John Mackey at the store near Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood. We’ll have more on that in a follow-up post on GeekWire. Thanks for tuning in and following our coverage.