Some Whole Foods are now offering sodas, chips, and more

Amazon-owned Whole Foods is testing whether it can become an everything grocer, while still keeping the organic trademark it has cultivated since its 1980 founding. Few stores now sell non-organic items like Tide Pods, Pepsi and Chips Ahoy.

According to The Wall Street Journal, some staff call it the “Amazonification at Whole Foods,” noting that the grocer has “become numbers-based.”

In a Philadelphia store, ShopBots—robots operated from a backroom—fetch non-organic items like Tide Pods and Pepsi for customers who order them via the Amazon app.

In a Chicago outlet, a 3,800-square-foot Amazon Grocery kiosk is inside a Whole Foods, selling traditional supermarket brands such as Chips Ahoy and Kraft Mac & Cheese.

Why?

While Amazon has established dominance in ecommerce, its grocery market share is only around 4%. It hoped for a turnaround by acquiring Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017, but its grocery ambitions are far from met.

It even handed over the Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go grocery operations to Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel this year.

Whole Foods currently runs 547 stores worldwide and employs 106,000 workers.

While CEO Buechel insists Whole Foods remains committed to its mission of offering the “highest quality natural and organic foods,” critics warn that blending conventional brands could dilute its identity.

Meanwhile, Whole Foods now faces rising competition from Walmart and Costco, both of which have expanded into organic offerings.