The Best Tweets About Whole Foods’ Mega Merger With Amazon

This morning, Twitter is weighing in on news that online retail giant Amazon is buying out organic grocery chain Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion. The deal — expected to close later this year — would be the largest grocery acquisition of all time and Amazon’s biggest purchase to date.

The merger comes after months of turmoil for the Whole Foods brand, which had experienced a major sales slump. Earlier this year, the company closed several locations for the first time ever. In a report from Texas Monthly out this month, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey criticized activist investors for pushing a sale, calling them “greedy bastards.” The sale sent Whole Foods stock prices surging on Friday, according to Bloomberg, while other major grocery chains and retails saw their share prices plummet.

The merger of two ubiquitous brands was clearly ripe for comedic commentary and the Twitterverse turned out to take swings at Amazon’s massive purchase. Was the buyout actually a notorious Amazon Alexa ordering mistake?

Others pointed to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s Wednesday tweet in which the billionaire crowdsourced suggestions for a “philanthropy strategy.” Could buying out Whole Foods be his way of giving back “at the intersection of urgent need and lasting impact”?

Perhaps Amazon is in the market for other grocery chains, too.

The Austin-based chain’s “Whole Paycheck” (more like whole asparagus water) reputation made easy joke fodder for followers of the deal.

Others suggested that Amazon would still have to pick up the rest of its food at a less “specialty” grocery store.

Some pondered how Whole Foods Market, which packs its paper bags to the brim, and Amazon, notorious for nesting small objects in giant boxes, would integrate their polar opposite packing strategies.

Many simply demanded their Prime orders for groceries be delivered post-haste by drone. The future of on-demand kombucha is now.

How will Amazon’s takeover of Whole Foods look on the ground? It’s still too early to tell. The company unveiled its original online grocery delivery service Amazon Fresh in 2008 and last year expended into physical, cashier-free Amazon Go stores where Amazon shoppers could pick up food and make purchases using an online app. Two Amazon Fresh Pickup locations also recently opened in the Seattle area.

• Amazon to Buy Whole Foods for $13.7 Billion [E]
• What Is Going on at Whole Foods? [E]