Thread regarding Whole Foods Market Inc. layoffs

This is not just being tested in a low-tier stores. You may end up changing roles without even knowing about it in advance.

That is the reality of business unfortunately. There are a lot of gripes and concerns that WF will fail, is losing it's competitive edge, etc. The way around that is to change some of the basics structures we've gotten so use to, including replacing buyers with auto-replenishment. It's inevitable. It s---s that many buyers will lose their jobs but it means the company could turn around. Definitely a double-edged sword but it is going to happen.

Only because it'll auto replenish some out of a job. Someone has to fall on the proverbial sword. I need my job and I need Wfm to find their competitive edge again

You guys are acting like auto replenishment is the hardest thing in the world, it's not. Tons of our competition has been doing it for years and they seem to be doing alright.

Some (not all) small vendors would probably like the auto replenishment. A few of them in my store who keep track of their products sales, manage their backstock, and deliver/stock it themselves basically just show up and tell us to make a PO for whatever their delivery is. If it's rolled out correctly it could work well. I doubt it's happening anytime soon, though. They made one good stride toward it with the new POS system, but if you've ever worked for a more conventional retailer, you know there's still a lot that they would have to change.

@KsFdXiI-lkj: You're right. The top execs and regional blowhards fail to recognize the complexity of this operation with hundreds of small vendors in cheese and WB. Then there are the local vendors for coffee etc. They have NO idea...just some consultant saying "You guys need to combine all this stuff." Who needs it? As for auto-replinishment, how's that going to work with hundreds of small vendors? This is a sh!!-show. It was a sh!!-show yesterday, it's a sh!!-show today and it will be worse when they botch auto-replenishment. Meanwhile, we're getting a Lucky's Market -- Natural and Organic for the 99%. That company is out of Boulder, it's backed by Kroger, and they're not going to stop opening stores. Yet another competitor that will do not have a dozen regions and a legacy of horrible mis-management...low costs, logical standard operating procedures.

Million dollar store I work at still has all departments separate including meat and seafood. They said it wouldn't happen at any store over $650K so both stores in my metro area aren't affected. They're opening a third store downtown in 2018 and it'll be a combo team store, I'm curious how that will work out.

a great way to save money would be to get rid of some of the ridiculous STL bonuses. seriously.

Our TL was already equivalent to a Target Sr TL, except they don't have to write schedules. This isn't even something Target has done.

To me it seems these positions are replacing the Astl position. why have an $$astl position when you have chesper tl performing those duties. They can report to the stl. The company has to reduce overhead and job elimination is the way to do it. Between job elimination/consolidation and new store slow down...tell me what is really the future at Wfm.

WF won't be around in 2020

I think it could be gold for some, its like an astl position without the pay,

Without being able to work more than 40 hours to do the job and with no training or regional support to help transition the team to doing the job with a grocery style no guest service labor budget but with the same expectations and same broken systems for ordering. In 2020 once all stores, global and regional convert and replenishment systems convert it will make sense..

In the smaller, lower sales stores this position makes sense. It's more like an astl position minus that astl pay. Some will see it as an opportunity to transition into an astl spot. So for some this will create a clear career path, should they choose.

Lead for some, gold for others.

How are the pt 20 grocery guys who stock water gonna answer wholebody questions from guests?? And i work in a store in soutj florida where many of the customers dont speak english-lots of spanish,french,italian,and russian..good luck..

Meanwhile, my store does 250k/wk, has everything separate except meat and seafood, and is hiring a second ASM.

WFM is failing, taking advice from Walmart executives, They can't complete with big box retailers. The people they hired and trained have no idea how much grocery a ShopRite,Acme or Giant can move, they trained a bunch of people that don't know how to work it's a failure as a company, they never adapted after everyone else caught up to them and management is to blame, c---ey company who now has to fold up.

My store was one of the first this rolled out to, with the first round of layoffs we merged WB/ Groc. We had a 4 person WB team, the TL was laid off, one tm was transferred out of store due to labor, one moved to the grocery side due to labor and the last one in WB quit. We now had no one in store with any WB knowledge. The grocery tms were scared to work the aisles when guest were in the store as there was not any training. labor for training or regional guidance for merging teams except that the tl now had to sit on 2 sets of conference calls and report to 2 sets of regional leadership taking them off the sales floor more. Although they would stock product fast, it was often times inaccurate leading to some free product and guest angry about the item they thought was $30 was actually $80 and in the wrong 1 inch space on the shelf. Theft went up and sales went down as no one was actually working in the department and it ia harder for a small $80 bottle to sale itself then a $3 carton of eggs with all needed information on the label. Out of stocks shot up and back stock was out of control as the ordering side for WB is not like grocery. A hundred vendors to order from all with different delivery timelines, return guidelines to follow etc. ( i do hear global is working on this to make the structure more like grocery with just a few vendors.. so eventually this will change) One year later specialty merged in. Again we lost all but one person from the side that merged with grocery, everyone left for opportunities that would get them out of the market team, either with vendors or into roles in store leadership or at larger stores that were not merging yet. the metro lost almost all beverage buyers within a 6 month period and had no one trained to fill gaps, so grocery leadership got to see the beverage ordering and vendor negotiating was a full 40 hours off floor. Cheese has the same ordering issues as wb, lots of vendors, lots of timing issues specific to each vendor. so again, sales dropped, out of stocks went up, sales went down and inventory was a nightmare. i think we will be saying good bye to a lot of people, those who wanted to move up, but do not want to be a market TL will likely start looking outside of WFM for opportunities.

Yeah they gotta test it before they roll it out to all the low tier stores. Good riddance to specialty and whole body team members. Theyre filled with lazy people