(Bloomberg) -- Tony Hoggett, the executive who led Amazon.com Inc.’s grocery business for the last couple of years, is leaving the e-commerce giant.
“It’s time for the next step in my career,” Hoggett, Amazon’s senior vice president of worldwide grocery stores, said Friday in a post on LinkedIn, without specifying what he’ll be doing next. His last day will be Nov. 1, Amazon retail chief Doug Herrington said in an email to employees seen by Bloomberg.
Hoggett, a former Tesco Plc executive, joined Amazon in early 2022 and led an effort to reboot the company’s grocery business and its approach to physical retail. Early in his tenure, he oversaw the closure of the company’s non-food retail storefronts — including bookstores, the Amazon 4-star variety market and a pair of apparel outlets.
The company owns Whole Foods Market, the organic grocer. It also runs a chain of Amazon Fresh-branded mainstream grocery stores, which the company started opening early in the pandemic before putting the breaks on expansion as executives reevaluated the stores.
Hoggett, who lives and works in Austin, where Whole Foods is based, sought to position Amazon as a one-stop shop by combining it’s e-commerce prowess with physical stores selling food at a variety of price points. He eliminated much of Amazon’s technology-heavy approach to physical retailing, pulling the cashierless Just Walk Out system from Amazon Fresh in favor of smart shopping carts, and emphasizing old-school touches like coffee bars and inviting storefronts.
He sought patience from investors and shoppers, saying that though Amazon has spent almost two decades trying to figure out how to sell groceries online, the company’s better-known competitors tend to be well-established brands that have been around much longer.
“My time at Amazon has been incredible, and I’m grateful to my colleagues for their support, guidance and friendship,” Hoggett said on LinkedIn. “I’m optimistic about the work Amazon is doing to improve the grocery shopping experience for customers, and have no doubt the teams will keep the momentum going in my absence.”
In his email to employees, Herrington pledged to “be thoughtful in our plans for Tony’s succession.”
(Updates with detail on Hoggett’s tenure, last day, beginning in the second paragraph.)
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