Tony Hoggett did leave Amazon—but this was an October 2024 leadership story, not a new 2026 departure. Hoggett, Amazon’s senior vice president of Worldwide Grocery Stores, announced on October 25, 2024, that he would leave the company. His final day was November 1, 2024.
The departure mattered because Hoggett oversaw Amazon’s broad grocery portfolio, including Whole Foods Market, Amazon Fresh, Amazon Go, grocery partnerships, delivery, and related product and technology operations. Amazon later placed Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel in charge of Worldwide Grocery Stores. By January 2026, Amazon had also announced a major shift away from expanding Amazon-branded physical grocery stores.
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What happened to Tony Hoggett at Amazon?
Amazon said Hoggett had decided to leave after nearly three years with the company. It did not publicly disclose a reason for his departure, so claims that he was fired, pushed out, or failed are not supported by the available announcements.
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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsHoggett’s exit was more significant than an ordinary divisional change. He was a member of Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s senior leadership group, commonly known as the S-team. That group is an internal executive leadership team—not Amazon’s board of directors.
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Amazon’s announcement is available in its leadership update, while GeekWire reported the October 25 announcement, November 1 final date, and S-team context.
What did Hoggett oversee?
Worldwide Grocery Stores was a wide-ranging organization rather than a single supermarket chain. Hoggett’s remit included:
- Whole Foods Market
- Amazon Fresh, including stores and online grocery
- Amazon Go convenience stores
- Grocery partnerships
- Grocery delivery
- Worldwide Grocery product and technology
That scope made the job strategically difficult. Amazon was trying to combine a premium grocery chain, convenience stores, an Amazon-branded supermarket concept, delivery services, and its Prime membership ecosystem without making the customer experience or economics unnecessarily complicated.
Why was the departure important?
Hoggett was hired as an experienced grocery operator at a time when Amazon was attempting to professionalize and unify its grocery strategy. He joined Amazon in January 2022 from Tesco, the British supermarket retailer.
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His role covered several of Amazon’s major grocery experiments, including efforts to connect physical stores with Amazon’s online ordering, logistics, technology, and Prime benefits. In April 2024, Amazon introduced a grocery-delivery subscription priced at $9.99 per month for Prime members and $4.99 per month for customers using a registered EBT card, with a 30-day free trial. The program covered eligible deliveries from Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, and participating local retailers, according to Amazon’s announcement.
The subscription illustrated the broader mandate: Amazon was trying to make grocery a recurring membership benefit, not merely another category sold through Amazon.com.
Was Hoggett immediately replaced?
No. Amazon initially put Hoggett’s direct reports under Doug Herrington while it worked on a permanent succession plan. Those executives included:
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- Jason Buechel, CEO of Whole Foods Market
- Claire Peters, who led Amazon Fresh
- Anand Varadarajan, who led worldwide grocery product and technology
The interim structure was reported by The Information.
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Who replaced Tony Hoggett?
On January 27, 2025, Amazon named Jason Buechel vice president of Worldwide Grocery Stores. Buechel continued as CEO of Whole Foods Market, giving him responsibility for the combined grocery organization while retaining leadership of Amazon’s largest grocery banner.
Amazon said Claire Peters would continue leading Amazon Fresh, Amazon Go, and Grocery Partnerships, while Anand Varadarajan would continue leading Worldwide Grocery product and technology. The company’s succession announcement therefore described a consolidated top-level structure, not the disappearance of every separate grocery operation.
Buechel had joined Whole Foods in 2013, became its chief operating officer, and was appointed CEO in 2022. His selection was strategically meaningful: it placed an established Whole Foods operator at the center of Amazon’s broader grocery effort.
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What happened to Hoggett after Amazon?
LinkedIn News reported that Hoggett later joined Wonder, the food-delivery startup founded by Marc Lore, as chief operating officer. Amazon’s departure announcement did not disclose that next role, so it should be treated as separately reported rather than as an Amazon-confirmed detail.
What changed in Amazon’s grocery strategy afterward?
The clearest hindsight comes from Amazon’s January 2026 grocery update. The company announced that it would close its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores, convert some locations into Whole Foods stores, and continue Amazon Fresh online.
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Amazon also said it would:
- Expand Whole Foods Market, including the smaller Daily Shop format
- Invest in same-day fresh-grocery delivery
- Continue developing online grocery
- Keep testing new physical concepts, including Amazon Grocery and a potential larger-format store
Amazon said it had not yet created a sufficiently distinctive customer experience or economic model for large-scale expansion of its Amazon-branded physical grocery stores. Its 2026 strategy announcement framed the change as a focus on customer value, delivery growth, and Whole Foods momentum.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Did Hoggett’s departure cause the store closures?
There is no evidence in the cited sources establishing that connection. The sequence is clear—Hoggett left in November 2024, Buechel took over the broader grocery role in January 2025, and Amazon announced the physical-store reset in January 2026—but sequence is not proof of causation.
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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteIt is more accurate to say that Hoggett’s exit exposed a leadership transition during a period of strategic uncertainty. Amazon’s later decisions show how the company rebalanced its grocery bets, not that Hoggett personally caused the outcome.
Is Amazon abandoning grocery?
No. Amazon is retreating from broad expansion of its own Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, but it is not abandoning grocery as a business.
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Whole Foods remains central to its physical-store strategy, Amazon Fresh continues online, and delivery—particularly same-day delivery of fresh products—remains a major focus. In a 2025 shareholder letter, Amazon said grocery generated more than $150 billion in gross sales in 2025 and described itself as the second-largest U.S. grocer. Those are Amazon’s own characterizations; gross sales are not the same as revenue or profit, and the ranking is not independently established by the cited source. See Andy Jassy’s shareholder letter.
The bottom line for investors and shoppers
Tony Hoggett’s departure was a genuine senior leadership change in 2024, not a current 2026 event. He left a role that spanned nearly all of Amazon’s major grocery operations, and Amazon ultimately replaced him with Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel.
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The subsequent strategy suggests a narrower, more focused model: Whole Foods for much of the physical-store presence, online Amazon Fresh and grocery delivery for digital reach, and continued experimentation rather than rapid expansion of Amazon-branded supermarkets and convenience stores. Amazon still sees grocery as strategically important, but its approach to physical grocery has clearly changed.
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