A Whole Foods store in Houston. Bettina Elias Siegel
It's the AMAZON FACTOR!
A Whole Foods store in Houston. Bettina Elias Siegel
- Whole Foods employees say stores are suffering from food shortages because of a newly implemented inventory-management system called order-to-shelf, or OTS.
- Whole Foods says the system reduces unnecessary inventory, lowers costs, and frees up employees to focus on customer service.
- Employees acknowledge that less food is spoiling in storage rooms, but they describe OTS as a "militaristic" system that crushes morale and leads to many items being out of stock.
- "Last week, we ran out of onions and potatoes twice," an employee of a Brooklyn Whole Foods store said. "Entire aisles are empty at times."
- "It has for weeks had empty shelves, and I shop there twice a week," one customer told Business Insider. "The prepared-food section is not refreshed, and food looks stale."
Whole Foods is facing a crush of food shortages in stores that's leading to empty shelves, furious customers, and frustrated employees.
Many customers are blaming Amazon, which bought Whole Foods in August for $13.7 billion. Analysts have speculated that the shortages could be due to a spike in shopper traffic in the wake of the acquisition.
But Whole Foods employees say the problems began before the acquisition. They blame the shortages on a buying system called order-to-shelf that Whole Foods implemented across its stores early last year. MORE