Whole Foods is officially rolling out its Amazon Prime membership deals across the country.
The long-awaited perks exclusive to Prime members hit Florida stores May 17 with a promise of reaching locations nationwide by summer's end. Now, Whole Foods' customers who are also Prime members can enjoy those perks in 12 states.
Starting Wednesday, Amazon Prime members can score discounts at all Whole Foods Market 365 stores across the country, as well as Whole Foods stores in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Louisiana, New Mexico, northern Nevada, northern California, Oklahoma and Texas.
To score the grocery deals, Prime members need to download the Whole Foods Market app and sign in with their Amazon account. At in-store checkout, customers can scan the app’s Prime Code and the discounts will be taken off at the register. Customers can also use their phone number to activate their accounts and save at checkout.
Since the online megastore acquired Whole Foods for $13.7 billion last June, it did away with the existing in-store loyalty program and shoppers have been waiting to see what, if any, new programs would be created.
In his annual shareholder letter, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed for the first time ever how many Prime members the company has — and it's a lot, over 100 million. Bezos also said Amazon is working on the technical side to develop more ways to offer different Prime benefits to Whole Foods shoppers.
At present, the discounts include an additional 10 percent off sale items marked by yellow tags throughout the store. There will also be Prime-only discounts on featured items that will rotate weekly — many of the current featured items listed on Amazon's latest deal press release are marked up to 50 percent off.
The way the store determines sales will shift from having regional stores select products and pricing. Moving forward, sales will be determined by Whole Foods' Texas headquarters and then implemented to stores nationwide. The practice mirrors the common business model used by many other big grocery store companies.