Business Insider
A Whole Foods store in Richmond, Virginia.
- Amazon's annual Prime Day, its Black Friday-like holiday in summer, is landing July 16 and promises 36 hours of deals online for Prime members.
- This year, Amazon is expanding the discounts to include all 445 Whole Foods stores in the United States.
- The stores will offer special discounts on "high-quality natural and organic products."
Whole Foods is getting in on the Prime Day action.
Amazon has wasted no time integrating its chain of grocery stores, which it purchased last year for $13.7 billion. And now, the stores are being added to Amazon's annual made-up holiday, Prime Day. It marks the first time that Prime Day deals will be available in a brick-and-mortar store and outside of Amazon.com itself.
Amazon said in a release that Prime members will be able to "taste the savings on the high-quality natural and organic products they love on Prime Day" at Whole Foods, with "deep discounts on select popular products."
It's unclear how these deals will differ from the Prime-only discounts Whole Foods has rolled out, seemingly just in time for Prime Day. The discounts had been rolled out to all Whole Foods stores across the country by the end of June.
As an added perk for Prime Day, Amazon will be offering an extra 10% off items already on sale.
Customers will need to download the new Whole Foods app and scan their Prime Code to catch the savings, just like they do with the regular Prime discounts at the grocery chain.
Additionally, holders of the Amazon Prime Rewards card will get 10% back on all Whole Foods purchases from July 14 to 17, up to $400 in cash back.
Whole Foods has become a huge area of growth for Prime as Amazon integrates the membership with the grocer. Keeping that in mind, it's no surprise that Prime Day would also be making a splash there.
The stores are now staging grounds for Prime membership, filled to the brim with in-store advertisements showing the latest deals that are available only for Prime members. Workers wear blue Prime aprons advertising the membership, and cashiers are supposed to make a point of asking customers whether they are Prime members and therefore entitled to discounts at checkout.
Asking customers directly, in person, whether they're part of the Prime program is something Amazon has never been able to do before. That changes the game, opening a new avenue of potential growth for the service.