Amazon.com’s Whole Foods Market grocery chain plans to lay off some corporate employees over the next two months as part of a reorganization plan to simplify operations, the company announced Thursday.
The company told employees that it will make changes to certain Global and Regional Support Teams, resulting in staff cuts, according to a memo sent to employees by the Whole Foods executive team.
The layoffs will impact less than 0.5 percent of the company’s total workforce, a Whole Foods spokesperson confirmed.
After the restructuring, the grocery chain will reduce the number of operating regions from nine to six. It will also create a companywide operations team and transition some specific store support services from regions to a single team.
“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,” the company wrote in the memo.
The cuts will not impact any store or distribution roles.
The downsizing of operating regions will not result in any store or facility closures, but rather redrawing the map of operations so that some locations will join other regions, according to the memo.
“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,” the memo said.
The news comes amid a time when its parent company, Amazon, has been cutting costs, including cutting 27,000 jobs across its own organization.
Whole Foods, which has over 500 stores across North America and the UK, currently plans to open about 50 new locations.
Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion as part of a wider effort to expand its groceries business. But those efforts have been rocky.
In February, the company said it planned to close some Amazon Fresh supermarkets and Go convenience stores as part of a periodic assessment of its grocery portfolio. In a letter to shareholders last week, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said “Whole Foods is on an encouraging path, but to have a larger impact on physical grocery” the company “must find a mass grocery format that we believe is worth expanding broadly.”
