At first I was surprised that these stores had survived this long, and then I remembered these were probably great write-offs to have around when the real goal

At first I was surprised that these stores had survived this long, and then I remembered these were probably great write-offs to have around when the real goal was probably data collection on how people navigated certain kinds of physical stores. Amazon is great at paying no tax because it has a lot of operations that on the surface lose a lot of money but whose real purpose is to funnel data into other, more successful projects. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the fate of Whole Foods in the long run.