Whole Foods to hire 6,000 new employees

Seattle-based Amazon announced last week that third-quarter net sales increased 34 percent to $43.7 billion, compared with $32.7 billion in 2016’s third quarter. The net sales included $1.3 billion from Whole Foods Market, which Amazon acquired on Aug. 28. Excluding Whole Foods and the $124 million favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales increased 29 percent compared with third quarter 2016.

A few days later, Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods said it is searching for “passionate, food-focused candidates” to join its team — 6,000 of them. Whole Foods is hosting a National Hiring Day at all of its U.S. stores on Nov. 2. Is this an indication that Amazon’s acquisition of the Austin, Texas-based organic and natural grocery retailer is going well? It’s certainly not a bad sign.

In a conference call last week with investors, Brian T. Olsavsky, chief financial officer and senior vice president of Amazon.com, described Amazon’s ownership of Whole Foods as “so far, so good.”

“I have been in meetings with [Whole Foods CEO] John Mackey and his team is very like-minded with us, customer-obsessed, and ready to work together to continue [its] mission and expand on [its] offerings that we can offer customers,” Olsavsky said. “Over time you'll see more cooperation and working together between AmazonFresh, Prime Now and Whole Foods as we can explore different ways to serve the customer.”

He added that there will be “a lot of integration, a lot of touch points and a lot of working together as we go forward.”

“And we think we'll be also developing new store formats,” he said.