so anyone have news? I heard rumors all weekend about them combining the grobodiality team sooner than planned (this october) and all the TLs and ATLs were called up to the weekly meeting. Normally its just TLs though. As I was clocking out it seemed like that was what had been announced. not for sure though. there was hardly anyone on the floor to help customers for this 45 minute meeting either.
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No doubt auto replenishing is on its way. That being said, perishable food is a tricky thing and WFM relies on too many different vendors to roll out with this even if the tech is ready. The role of the grocery buyer positions will more than likely involve daily inventory. As for produce and pfds, I have a feeling those positions will be ellmnated and absorbed by tl's/atl's. This is just speculation based on how the competition runs things.
I agree auto replenishing isn't foolproof. When I worked for a major auto parts retailer, they had a decent system as long as cycle counts were performed correctly. Smaller items like lugnuts were always more iffy. I forsee the buyer position becoming more of an inventory specialist with individual stores having much less autonomy over what products are carried (on the nonperishable side at the very least). From what I understand, that was the point of the new POS systems. We went from having I think 5 separate systems company wide to just one that supposedly have the ability to track inventory. Of course it's WFM and I agree their track record for new tech rollouts have obviously been pretty hit or miss. IRMA is still broken, lol
Autoreplenishing does require maintenance, organization, and systems. Accurate inventory is also key. I see this as a disaster. It is technology that saves labor, but does not run on its own.
Coincidence that they hired peeps from Walmart to global? They run as combo depts
Haha
@Jfe0wy5-1vou, what you should realize, it that other chains have systems in place to allow for that. Whole Foods still does not, it's coming right? While the other chains probably can and will operate without all the fluff, WFM pulled the trigger on the plan a bit prematurely and if you have been around for any of WFM great new updates and upgrades you will know they are always plagued with inconsistency and crappy training.
People should realize other chains operate very well without all these positions whole foods has or have had like buyers, specialty managers, demo teams, tons of supervisors store artist marketing people at store level beer buyers and so on
What I accidentally left out from the meeting/Q&A:
-Combo teams are definitely coming to all stores that do less than $650K. Any new stores will open as combo team stores. But preexisting stores that do more than $650K are safe for now, although it's obvious that when they decide the combo team stores are successful, they'll probably do it in all stores.
Apologies, accidentally cut out a chunk of my post
Recently had a joint 2 store meeting in the South Region, Omar G--e did a Q we just don't know when. He also said the goal is to give 9 months of notice to anyone who's job may be affected.
-Auto replenishment is definitely coming soon, although according to Omar the buyer position is "not necessarily" going away. From what he said it definitely sounds like they'll be reducing the buyer positions even further, however, and whatever they call the buyer at that point in time will be pretty different from what we have now.
-He doesn't like using the word "cuts". He said that multiple times. According to him it's all just "finding better ways to spend money". What a load of BS
They're definitely looking to cut labor expenses any way they can. That's basically the gist of what he said
Who knows just wait and see what happens stop giving useless info
@emo you should contribute here - not ramble
This should be more of a 2017 question: I'd rephrase this and ask: Whole Foods Layoffs 2017 - do you expect large job cuts at WFM in 2017. The answer is simply, yes, there will be job cuts at WFM in 2017