Amazon says it’s doubling down on opening Whole Foods stores. That sounds familiar.
The company says it’ll open 100 Whole Foods locations in the next few years. That sounds similar to plans Whole Foods’ CEO laid out for opening 30 stores a year in 2024. Since then, it appears to have added 14, total.
Amazon put out a press release today saying it’s doubling down on physical retail, announcing plans to open more than 100 Whole Foods Market stores over the next few years.
That sounds like a lot. But it also sounds familiar.
Amazon and Whole Foods have been talking up aggressive expansion plans for years, without much to show for it. In May 2024, Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel said the grocer aimed to open more than 30 stores per year, with 75 locations already in the development pipeline.
Yet the store count tells a much slower story. According to Wayback Machine archives of Whole Foods’ “About” page, the company had 514 US stores, 14 in Canada, and 7 in the UK as of June 2023. Nearly two years later, that page lists 531 US stores, 12 in Canada, and 6 in the UK — a net increase of just 14 stores worldwide, or roughly seven per year. That total includes closures, meaning Whole Foods may have opened more locations than that but shuttered others along the way.
Amazon didn’t respond to specific questions about what happened to the earlier rollout. Instead, it pointed back to language from Tuesday’s press release.
“While we've seen encouraging signals in our Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, we haven't yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion,” the company wrote, explaining its decision to close the remaining Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores — some of which will be converted into Whole Foods locations.
Still, Tuesday’s announcement underscores Amazon’s growing focus on groceries, which it increasingly sees as a hybrid business spanning same-day delivery and physical stores. A larger store footprint would support that delivery push. And Amazon customers still shop at stores in person, after all, while the vast majority of retail sales continue to happen offline.
In December, Amazon said it offered same-day grocery delivery in 2,300 US cities and it’s planning to expand to more locations in 2026. And just last week, the company won approval to open a massive hybrid big-box grocery store and fulfillment center outside Chicago.
Whether Amazon’s latest pledge marks a real shift will become clear only if its store counts start rising much more quickly than they have been.
