Whole Foods Market has 19 stores in Colorado, but the natural-foods grocer in the state before Friday’s reported
and Colorado Springs closed down this spring, .
, will go dark this fall, around the same time opens near Union Station.
Whole Foods has had a presence in Colorado for years. Its
In 2007, when it announced plans to , Whole Foods had seven stores in Colorado.
Amazon in recent months has been rapidly expanding its physical presence in Colorado, as well.
Just this week, the e-commerce giant and announced plans to build a second fulfillment center in the metro area, a .
Amazon’s first Colorado fulfillment center, a , is expected to open this summer, not far from a sortation facility that receives packages from other Amazon warehouses, sorts them by ZIP code and then delivers them to local post offices. Amazon also has filed building permits for a .
One analyst told Bloomberg that the Whole Foods deal could speed up Amazon’s delivery abilities even further.
“Amazon clearly wants to be in grocery, clearly believes a physical presence gives them an advantage,” Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc., told Bloomberg. “I assume the physical presence gives them the ability to distribute other products more locally. So theoretically you could get 5-minute delivery.”
