Whole Foods CEO says grocery will turn Amazon from the ‘everything store’ into the ‘everyday store’

In today’s CEO Daily: An interview about all things grocery with Jason Buechel

The big leadership story: What Linda Yaccarino learned from Elon Musk

The markets: In the red globally

Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune

Good morning. How much do consumers value convenience, cool technology, and low cost? It’s not an easy answer. Just ask Jason Buechel, the CEO of Whole Foods and vice president of Amazon Worldwide Grocery Stores. In a new Fortune video segment called CEO Source, he talks about the tough decisions in expanding Amazon’s grocery business, which last year generated more than $150 billion in sales. His mission is clear: “Amazon has been known as the everything store, and I believe with grocery we are going to be the everyday store,” he told me, noting the goal is “greater engagement, not only just within grocery, but the broader store.”

But everything comes at a price. Among the questions that we discussed.

How much do you pay your people? We live in an era where business leaders can be billionaires as their colleagues struggle to pay the bills. Buechel talked about Amazon’s recent $230 million pledge to offer higher pay, benefits, and college perks to more than 100,000 Whole Foods workers. In many ways, it’s a return to Whole Foods’ roots: co-founder John Mackey famously capped executive salaries at 19 times the average worker pay before selling the chain to Amazon in 2017. Buechel comes from that culture. The eldest child of a cheese maker in Wisconsin who grew much of the family’s produce, he was Whole Foods’ CIO and Mackey’s chosen successor prior to the........

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