Whole Foods plans to lay off several hundred corporate employees: Read the memo here
Amazon‘s Whole Foods is letting go some corporate employees as part of a planned reorganization of select teams, and as its parent company closely examines costs.
Whole Foods plans to reorganize certain global and regional support teams over the next two months, the company’s executive team wrote in a memo to employees on Thursday. As a result, the upscale grocer is laying off several hundred employees from those teams, a spokesperson confirmed. The cuts translate to about less than half of a percent of the company’s global workforce, a Whole Foods Market spokesperson said.
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“We often talk about how simplifying our work and improving how we operate is critical as we grow,” the executive team wrote in the memo. “We’ve made great progress in these areas through previous operational and organizational changes. As the grocery industry continues to rapidly evolve, and as we — like all retailers — have navigated challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic and continued economic uncertainty, it has become clear that we need to continue to build on these changes. With additional adjustments, we will be able to further simplify our operations, make processes easier, and improve how we support our stores.”
As part of the changes, Whole Foods, which operates across nine different regions, will shift to six regions. The move won’t result in any store closures or the letting go of any store or distribution center employees, according to the memo.
Whole Foods is tweaking its operational structure as it seeks to expand and better serve customers, the spokesperson said. The company has roughly 50 new stores in development, they added.
Amazon in 2017 spent $13.7 billion to acquire the upscale grocer, a move that sent shock waves through that industry. The retail giant acquired Whole Foods with the hopes of accelerating its multiyear push into selling groceries online and in physical stores.
Whole Foods has undergone other operational changes since Amazon acquired it. The company in 2021 merged its global and regional merchandising teams, and shifted its technology team to focus on software engineering, technical product and program manager roles, to “sustain our growth.”
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently hit pause on expansion of its Fresh supermarket chain amid a companywide effort to rein in expenses. It also shuttered some Fresh locations and Go cashierless convenience stores. Some employees in Amazon’s grocery unit were let go in a recent round of layoffs announced in January.
Still, Jassy has said he remains confident about Amazon’s potential to grow its grocery business. In his letter to shareholders last week, Jassy said the e-commerce giant “must find a mass grocery format that we believe is worth expanding broadly” to make a larger impact on brick-and-mortar grocery.
Here’s the full memo:
Improving Our Operating Structure to Better Support Our Stores
Dear Team Members,
We often talk about how simplifying our work and improving how we operate is critical as we grow. We’ve made great progress in these areas through previous operational and organizational changes. As the grocery industry continues to rapidly evolve, and as we — like all retailers — have navigated challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic and continued economic uncertainty, it has become clear that we need to continue to build on these changes. With additional adjustments, we will be able to further simplify our operations, make processes easier, and improve how we support our stores.
To achieve this, we will evolve our operating structure and make a few changes to certain Global and Regional Support teams over the next two months. We see great opportunity to advance our impact on the world, and these changes will help us fully capture that opportunity. These changes include:
- Shifting from nine to six regions with a more consistent number of stores per region. Moving to fewer regions of similar sizes will allow us to quickly make decisions, implement sustainable processes, and scale innovations. Ultimately, it will help us elevate the service we provide our customers, Team Members, and suppliers. As we redraw the lines of our regional map, some stores may become part of a new region, but this shift won’t result in any store or facility closures or change our commitment to maintaining local relevance in our stores. See our new regional map and leadership details below. Team Members can expect to hear from the leader of their future region early next week.
- Creating a unified, companywide Operations team by transitioning category-specific store operations support from regions to a single Field Support team within our Global Operations team. Additionally, we will alleviate supply chain management work from regions, transitioning these responsibilities to a new Supply Chain Performance Management function within our Global Supply Chain team. These changes will free up time for stores to focus on serving customers, while unifying communications and support around clear Operations priorities.
- Enhancing Team Member Services (TMS) support for Team Members and Leaders across the company by realigning TMS team structures. This will help eliminate a significant amount of transactional work, which will allow our TMS teams to focus more on supporting Team Member experience, growth, and development. This will also empower store leadership to operate with more agility and have more time to focus on priority initiatives.
- Adjusting structures and improving processes of several other Global Support teams to provide more effective, timely, and consistent support to stores and ensure support teams can focus on priority initiatives. We will begin sharing more information about Global Support team changes with respective teams today. We will also meet with store and facility leadership to discuss these updates in more detail.
These changes will impact our Team Members in different ways. Store and facility-based roles are not directly impacted, though there will be some adjustments to how support and store teams work together. There will be some reductions in headcount on certain Global and Regional support teams, and those impacted will receive more information today. While change is necessary and healthy for a sustainable business, it can also be very challenging, particularly when it affects the lives of Team Members. We are committed to supporting all impacted Team Members through these transitions.
As we simplify processes and improve how we operate, we will be able to quickly respond to evolving business needs, focus more on our most impactful work, and invest in new ways to serve all stakeholders. We are confident these changes will allow us to better support our stores, Team Members, and suppliers, elevate the customer experience, and position Whole Foods Market for continued growth. Most important, these changes will help ensure we deliver on our Purpose to nourish people and the planet for decades to come.
Sincerely, E-Team
A DoorDash sign is pictured on a restaurant on the day they hold their IPO in New York, December 9, 2020.
Carlo Allegri | Reuters
Doordash on Tuesday announced the $1.2 billion acquisition of restaurant booking platform SevenRooms and reported first-quarter revenue that missed expectations.
Shares fell about 4% following the news.
Here’s how the company did, based on LSEG expectations:
- Earnings per share: 44 cents adjusted vs. 39 cents expected
- Revenue: $3.03 billion vs. $3.09 billion expected
Doordash said the all-cash acquisition of SevenRooms, a New York City-based data platform for restaurants and hotels to manage booking information, will close in the second half of 2025.
British food delivery service Deliveroo said Tuesday that they have agreed to a takeover offer from American rival Doordash worth $3.9 billion.
“We believe both SevenRooms and Deliveroo will expand our ability to build world class services that increase our potential to grow local commerce and support our financial goals,” Doordash said in a release.
Doordash reported total orders of 732 million for the quarter, an 18% increase over the same period a year ago. Analysts polled by StreetAccount expected 732.7 million.
The company said it expects second-quarter adjusted EBITDA of $600 million to $650 million. Analysts polled by StreetAccount expected $639 million.
“So far in 2025, consumer demand on our marketplaces has remained strong, with engagement across different consumer cohorts and types that we believe is consistent with typical seasonal patterns,” the company said.
Doordash reported $193 million in net income for Q1 2025, or 44 cents per share. The company had a net loss of $23 million, or a net loss of 6 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago.
Doordash noted growth in the grocery delivery category, citing “accelerating average spend per grocery consumer and increasing average spend on perishables.”
The company did not mention tariffs as a factor in the financial outlook, but did note that an increased international presence leaves it open to “geopolitical and currency risks.”
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Technology
Temu and Shein face massive tariffs. But don’t count them out of the U.S. e-tail scene, experts say
Photo illustration of the Shein app on the App Store reflected in the Temu logo.
Stefani Reynolds | Afp | Getty Images
The closure of a trade loophole and prohibitive tariffs on China have upended Temu and Shein’s business model in the United States. And yet the e-commerce companies are likely to remain a dominant force in American online retailing, experts suggest.
On Friday, the de minimis rule — a policy that had exempted U.S. imports worth $800 from trade tariffs — officially closed for shipments from China. This has seen Temu and Shein exposed to duties as high as 120% or a flat fee of $100, set to rise to $200 in June.
The small-package tariff exemption had been key to the companies’ ability to maintain budget prices on the merchandise they ship from China. Now that it’s gone, prices on Temu and Shein have been surging, with the former ending direct shipments from outside the U.S. altogether.
The change will be welcomed by many detractors of de minimis, among them U.S. lawmakers, labor unions and retailers, who have argued that Temu and Shein abused the exemption to undercut local businesses and flood the country with illicit and counterfeit products.
But despite the new trade challenges that Temu and Shein face, ecommerce and supply chain experts told CNBC that the companies are still capable of competing with their rivals in the U.S.
“Don’t count them out … Not at all. These kinds of Chinese e-commerce apps are very adept and agile. They have contingency plans in place and have taken the necessary steps to cover the tariffs from a margin perspective,” said Deborah Weinswig, CEO and founder of Coresight Research.
“I personally believe, if anything, [America’s e-commerce] game has been accelerating in favor of Temu and Shein … I wouldn’t be surprised if the competitiveness gap actually continues to widen,” added Weinswig, whose research and advisory firm works with clients across tech, retail and supply chains.
Contingencies in place
The loss of the de minimis exemption had long been anticipated, with U.S. President Donald Trump temporarily closing it in February. In preparation, Temu and Shein had been accelerating localization strategies for the U.S.
Scott Miller, CEO of e-commerce consulting firm pdPlus, told CNBC that Shein and Temu will continue to onboard goods from American sellers onto their apps to protect them from tariffs.
“Many of the current sellers on Temu and Shein are located in China or countries nearby, but not all. Local U.S. companies have been joining these platforms at an accelerating pace … several of our clients have onboarded or began the process of onboarding in just the past few months,” he said.
While margins for more localized brands and other sellers won’t be as high as those for China-based sellers on the platforms, they can be competitive, he said.
He added that in the case of Temu, vendors are attracted to lower fees, lighter competition and greater assistance with onboarding and setting up sales channels compared with what Amazon offers.
In recent days, Temu, which is owned by Chinese e-commerce giant PDD Holdings, has begun exclusively offering goods shipped from local warehouses to U.S. shoppers.
Many of those goods are still sourced from China but then shipped in bulk to U.S. warehouses, according to experts. While these bulk items are subject to tariffs, they also benefit from economies of scale.
This development is likely to see the variety of products on Temu scaled back, said Henry Jin, an associate professor of supply chain management at Miami University. However, he added, Temu is likely to resume direct shipments from China, depending on the outcome of the trade war between the U.S. and China.
Shein, meanwhile, has leaned into supply chain expansion, building manufacturing operations in countries such as Turkey, Mexico and Brazil, and reportedly plans to shift to Vietnam.
The company appears to still be shipping directly from China and likely has more room to absorb tariffs because of its “sky-high” margins in its core fast-fashion business, Jin said.
“If there’s one thing that Chinese companies are good at, it’s operating on a razor thin margin in an intensely competitive, if not adverse environment … they find every scrap that they can to survive,” he added.
Competitive prices?
Contingency plans aside, experts agree that Trump’s trade policy will continue to affect prices on Temu and Shein. The companies first announced they were raising prices in mid-April to counter tariffs.
According to data from Coresight, prices across shopping categories on Shein rose between 5% and 50% in the latter half of April, with the sharpest rises seen in toys and games and beauty and health.
However, many e-commerce experts remain confident that Temu and Shein will continue to prove price-competitive.
Coresight’s Weinswig said the two companies have previously been able to offer products at a third of the prices on Amazon for comparable goods. So, even if they more than double the prices to absorb the impacts of tariffs, many goods could remain cheaper than those on American e-commerce sites and retailers.
Jason Wong, who works in product logistics for Temu in Hong Kong, noted this dynamic when speaking to CNBC last month, likening Temu to a dollar store. If prices at the dollar store go from $1 to $2, it’s still a dollar store, he said.
Furthermore, Trump’s trade tariffs on China and other trade partners have also affected American retailers and e-commerce sites like Amazon.
Other advantages
When Forever 21 filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year, it blamed Shein and Temu’s use of the de minimis exemption, which it said “undercut” its business.
But experts say that exclusively attributing the success of Shein and Temu to that trade loophole misses many of the other factors that have made them smash hits in the U.S.
According to Anand Kumar, associate director of research at Coresight Research, Temu and Shein owe a lot of their success to their very agile supply chains that adapt fast to consumer trends.
For example, Shein’s small-batch production — in which product styles are initially launched in limited quantities, typically around 100-200 items — allows it to test and scale products efficiently.
Another key is the companies’ applications, which use various strategies to maintain user interest, including frequent phone notifications, product recommendation algorithms and perhaps most notably, constantly displaying discounted prices from promotions and flash sales.
Temu was offering a “mega savings extravaganza” for American consumers on Monday. Some of the bestselling items on sale included stainless steel hook earnings for $1.45 and a fitted mattress pad for $11.54. It’s unclear if the discounted local goods were stockpiled before tariffs came into effect.
In addition, app users will often be met with mini-games that grant different coupons or ways to earn rewards, as well as opportunities to buy “mystery boxes” with assorted products.
That “gamification strategy” definitely plays into the consumer psychology of many U.S. shoppers who often buy items out of the excitement of being able to get a great deal, said Miami University’s Jin.
Experts also flagged that Temu and Shein have been very effective at marketing, including through the harnessing of livestreaming and social media.
On the other hand, according to Coresights’ Weinswig, American retailers have failed to adequately recognize threats from Temu and Shein and adjust their supply chains and pricing models.
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