Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
(finance.yahoo.com)312 points by trenning 5 days ago
312 points by trenning 5 days ago
Every time I walk into a McDonalds I see people who will rather stand 5 minutes at the counter waiting for a human cashier than use one of the available kiosks. I'm sure some are paying cash but there are certainly people who are just not comfortable with technology.
The Go stores were a great experience but they would certainly be uncomfortable for anyone other than early-adopter or tech-forward types of people. I would just walk in with my own bag, and put items directly from the shelf into the bag, and walk out the door. It was extremely convenient and fast once you got over how weird it felt.
I think they could have done a lot more in giving social clues on both the way in and way out.
A lot of people have trouble using those and it's not just tech discomfort or whatever. You have to be able to hold your arms up in front of you, touching specific points in space. The UI is not good and does not provide good moment-to-moment feedback about whether you've pressed a button or which one. You have to be moderately-to-strongly literate, you have to wrap your head around the menu organization, know what you're looking for by name and be able to guess where it is in this system.
I've watched so many people struggle to use these machines for so many different reasons. Pretty much anyone with a physical or cognitive disability will be better off with the cashier. Sucks they have to wait much longer for one now.
I think the systems are good in the context of "computer ordering systems", but not great in the context of "food accessibility". They're built with a lot of inherent presumptions that likely apply to most of the peer groups of the people designing it, but certainly do not in the field.
I am quite privileged and I know numerous people who might have trouble telling you the name of the meal they want even if presented with a hard copy of a menu.
I hate McDonald's, but I've used one at a Subway that took five seconds to respond to every button press. Useless! Feels like it was written in Electron and running on an Android tablet from 2012.
They’re fine and work as advertised. One weird thing is you don’t get the receipt for 10-20 minutes, presumably while humans are viewing the footage.
The main thing I use it for is convenient returns, which is why I’m disappointed in this news. I hardly ever buy things there other than things like gum or chips.
The regular Fresh stores have a scanner and screen on the cart that you can use to track your purchases while shopping, then the cashier could pull up the contents in one go, without scanning scanning at the register. There's also some discounted products for Prime members that can be applied by pulling up your account on your phone and displaying a barcode.
I went there the first week they opened, and the whole store was a mess with shoppers standing still or walking slowly, completely unaware of their surrounds, while messing with the phone or their cart trying to figure it out.
I'm sure that with enough time, shoppers could figure out there system, but I was in a hurry so I just grabbed the few items I wanted and paid cash, which was just as fast as it is everywhere else.
I do want to stop by before it closes, and see if customers figured out their systems, in the year and a half the location has been open.
I use the one situated in Seattle, Amazon HQ. It's just like self-checkout at a grocery store with fewer steps. The entrance/payment mechanism is Amazon One (a palm scan associated with a payment wallet). At Whole Foods, it's used as an optional payment option at checkout.
It's convenient; I only ever remember one problem where it thought I had purchased an item that I picked up and decided on something else. I disputed it online and it was resolved in a day.
our university has been rolling out just walk out markets across campus due to rampant stealing. shopping there doesn't feel like stealing, but the store design feels oppressive with racks of cameras and thick black shelves because it's designed for sensors first not humans
one minor downside (especially since I don't live on campus anymore) is that in order to walk around and peruse the shelves, I have to give them my payment info just to enter
Here they replaced all the markets that were staffed by people with these big vending machines that are 3 or 4 refrigerated cabinets (even chips are refrigerated). You pay, wait a bit for it to process it, and then it unlocks the doors and you grab whatever. And if it gets it wrong there’s no dispute process to tell it you didn’t pick something up (I think there is an email listed but I didn’t care enough the time it messed up to send an email). And half the time when you click the pay button to finish, it’ll complain about a door not locking.
I went to the first couple of Amazon Go stores in San Francisco several times. I've also been to our local Go store a few times in LA County. The experience has always been perfectly fine, and the invoices always correct. It's basically just a small junk food and liquor store similar to a 7-Eleven.
Loved the Go store in Chicago (Ogilvy), had some great lunch options and even a take home "dinner for two" bag of premade ingredients.
I'm probably not a typical case, but I felt like my privacy was massively invaded. The concept was cool, but I felt like every muscle twitch was being scrutinized and recorded forever. I was also in constant fear that the computer would charge me for things I didn't buy and getting it corrected would be a nightmare. I also felt like if there was a bug or malfunction in the system and it didn't charge me for something (which I wouldn't know about immediately) they would come after me as a shoplifter with the full force of a mega corporation with unlimited resources. It felt like there were a thousand high powered lawyers that I couldn't see, watching my every move waiting for some mess up (even though I have no intention whatsoever other than finding and paying for the product I wanted).
So no I didn't feel like I was a thief. But I felt like they assumed I was a thief. My guess is most stores are heavily surveilled nowadays, so it might be unreasonable for me to feel this way with Amazon but not Walmart or Target or Kroger, but that's how it felt.
Walmart and Kroger near me now have one way metal cattle gates that you have to pass through when you enter. Makes me feel like cattle and that their assuming I am a thief. Trips to those locations have dropped.
The Home Depot cameras and screens that "BING BONG" loudly as you pass by to get you to notice them showing that they are recording you are also highly annoying.
I wish there was a greater variety of hardware stores near me...
Doesn't surprise me either. Anecdotal story coming, but there is physical location on Philadelphia, and I stopped by as I needed an item for dinner that night, and it was on my way home.
Store was kind of bare, and poorly organized. But the kicker is they didn't accept any form of mobile wallet! They had an identical POS system to wholefoods which takes it just fine.
So I quickly put my items back and headed to Giant.. Haven't been back since
They have a good price on take out pizza. Unlimited toppings, and with Prime membership it's $8 something for a large pizza. It was probably their loss leader to get people in the store. I felt like the store was usually pretty empty when I was there. I wonder if Amazon will keep Whole Foods too.
Isn't the same tech used in stadiums? At least in Seattle we can just walk out without paying, even alcohol. Obviously we have to scan our CC or something similar to get in but I always thought it was using the same Amazon tech.
So even though these stores are closing, the tech is widely used and likely expanding and succeeding
I quite liked the ones in London. I loved the experience of just walking in and out really quick.
I knew someone who worked at Amazon UK and they told me years ago they were doing very baldy and there was talk of them closing.
So I'm not surprised to hear this at all.
We have Żabka Nano which is self-serve cashierless shop in Poland. You just swipe you card at the entrance, get whatever you want and walk out. I think they use computer vision system to detect the products taken from the shelves. It kinda amazes me because it's what Amazon promised but failed to deliver.
They never made sense to have but I’m sure someone made a huge career and got lots of bonuses for this initiative
John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, mentioned at the end of his autiobiography The Whole Story that that there wasn't much collaboration within the higher-ups at Amazon. From the gist of it, I wouldn't be surprised if the internal retail division was trying to outshine the Whole Foods division by throwing technology at everything, useful or not, because that's what Amazon corporate appreciates.
I don't live around any Amazon Fresh stores so I never saw them though I did see the technology in use at several airports (though I've never personally used it). IMO I think places like airports are the best place for something like this, people are usually in a rush so not having to wait in line to checkout is nice and you don't have to worry about security as much because everyone there is a ticketed passenger (only saw them post-security) and even if someone did try stealing they wouldn't get very far.
I saw these in several different airports. It usually had multiple people staffed at the gate to get in and out meanwhile most of the other snack vendors often only had a single person employed.
So you spend a few hundred thousand dollars extra on all the cameras, many millions on all the design, pay all the overseas contractors to manually review the transactions, and you still end up with twice the in-person staff than the average store in the airport.
I used one in San Francisco once because I wanted to try it out. It was honestly a rather flawless experience for me and I liked it because the scan gate and minders (it was when it launched - I don't know if they kept them) kept the shoplifters out. Shoplifters are unpleasant to share a store with. Unsurprisingly, those who skip some social norms also skip other ones.
Anyway, I didn't go back after the first time because it was more like a corner store than a grocery store. Bags of chips and sandwiches in plastic boxes and so on. Overall, the modern Whole Foods is a much better experience. Guards at the entrance to keep unpleasant people out, a fairly quick check-out experience, and the ability to scan your palm instead of having to pull out a credit card or tap your watch.
About the only improvement that I would personally like is a Fast Shopper bonus where you scan something that maps you to your Amazon Prime profile and if you finish checking out fast you get access to a faster lane. The only downside is when people with large bags of things insist on using the self check-out counters and then stand there having mis-scanned items.
Speeding up check-out is a personal life improvement but realistically it would not cause me to shop more, so I understand discontinuing the store.
The general force behind this is the expansion of sub-same-day delivery which they have been pushing hard for the last year. Amazon fresh was a more traditional model which didn't fit in well with amazon's strengths (fulfillment, automation) because they tried to enter a market they were directly competing with (in-person shopping) and charged users for delivery in addition to their existing membership.
It's a welcome change IMO, amazon groceries are super cheap online and now delivery is free. They have been removing the fresh name from products for a few months now and replacing with amazon grocery. Certainly less confusion for consumers, at least
Related: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-same-day-fres... https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-same-day-fres...
I've only been to the Amazon Fresh in my neighborhood, haven't been to other locations, here is what my experience was like:
They resisted implementing self checkout for years before eventually folding. No digital wallets though, you have to either use plastic or link it to your Amazon account.
The whole dash cart system was a solution in search of a problem IMO. I'm already able to check out about as efficiently as possible. Frontloading the scanning time isn't really an amazing improvement. The store was never crowded enough for it to matter.
My biggest problem with the store was that it was lacking random pantry staples and supplies that you would expect from your primary grocer. Several times I showed up in desperate need of something for a recipe or household task and they just wouldn't have it.
The produce was actually decent quality and competitively priced, but my alternative (the local Ralph's) I think just had some kind of curse or something on it because the produce at that specific location was a consistent level of awful observed over 5 years.
I hope they replace it with a whole foods, much better store IMO.
I guess I am in the minority but I really liked the dash cart. Apart from the occasional niggle, it worked as advertised once I understood the system. I get my own bags to the store, so I can directly bag items as I go and just walk out when done.
Once their vision for "grab and go" vanished due to technological infeasibility [1] the entire premise for the stores vanished as well.
I suspect that they wanted to take a hail marry to see if somehow it was possible to get much greater efficiency compared to standard grocers, and it looks like that failed.
[1] it may come back. The technology is rapidly improving but they have bigger fish to fry ATM.
These were absolutely incredible when they first opened up right on until covid. The blue-apron style meal kits they had were actually really tasty and the gimmicky integration with Alexa to tell you the next step in the recipe was actually kind of useful when you were busy stirring a pot or cutting something and too busy to pull out the recipe card. It was like a 7-Eleven, but with the prices of a normal grocery store and higher quality prepared food. Not needing to deal with checkout felt freeing. I substituted many grocery store runs with a quick walk over to the original Amazon Go back in the day.
After covid, it was never the same. Open for shorter windows, closed on Sundays, reduced selection, no more meal kits etc.
I had many friends who worked on Amazon Go, so it's a bit sad to see that work come to an end.
> I had many friends who worked on Amazon Go, so it's a bit sad to see that work come to an end.
What did they do?
I really liked the local Amazon Fresh, until they discontinued "just walk out" and replaced it with those hellish smart carts. I scanned one item successfully with the cart, got completely stuck trying to get it to scan a second one, handed the cart back to the employee, and never went back.
Amazon Fresh provided lots of good jobs in my community. Family members worked there. Good pay and they employed locally (or can walk to work). Same with whole foods. Too bad Amazon couldn't make it work. Interesting timing with their push for more online grocery offerings.
Went to return some packages at the local Fresh store on Jackson. Huge long line to get in. Eventually wound up doing some shopping. Place was very full (within fire regulations of course). Some good security and organizing folk. A tip bowl at the return desk that said "help the employees get wasted". All the pricing is electronic and puterized so I'm expecting that at the last minute on the last day the last product will sell for within a cent.
Actually knowing Amazon they'll give the staff a huge gimme and nice bonuses. People crap on Amazon but they are a good employe for the little guy. They can't rewrite society so go for that take. Otherwise people are bummed they lost good jobs.
The "1000 people in India watching cameras" reveal was the moment the magic died. Once you know the wizard is just a guy behind a curtain, you can't unsee it.
The interesting question isn't whether the tech was ready. It wasn't. The question is whether Amazon learned anything useful from the attempt.
Computer vision for retail checkout is a legitimate hard problem. Occlusion, similar-looking products, people changing their minds. I've worked on CV pipelines and the gap between "works in the demo" and "works at scale" is brutal.
My guess: they collected a ton of training data from those human reviewers. Whether they'll use it for a v2 or just write it off, who knows.
Aside from the magic dying, which I agree with, another commenter in this thread says there could be false positives (whether from Indians or AI doesn't matter) you'd have to 1) notice by studying your bill later and 2) resolve by requesting refunds online.
Knowing this, it was over before it ever started. Beyond the masses of people already having aversion to the oddness of how it worked and likely never wanting to try it, these and others would swear off the store forever the first time they ever got charged for something they didn't take. No one wants to monitor and fix erroneous purchase errors.
Damn. I just got an email that they'll be discontinuing the palm payment June 3. I've barely used Fresh and Go, but I use this at self checkout at Whole Foods all the time. Beats finding the code to scan and using Apple Pay.
> We're reaching out because you have an active Amazon One account. Amazon One palm authentication services will be discontinued at retail businesses on June 3, 2026. You can continue using Amazon One at participating locations until that date.
> Amazon will automatically delete Amazon One user data, including palm data. No action is needed from you.
Same. Bummed about Amazon one palm, I use it all the time.
There are around 12 Amazon Go / Amazon Fresh in the metro Chicago area. Unless all employees are part-time employees (and assuming around 10-ish employees per store), I seriously wonder how they got around Illinois WARN requirements [1] requiring 60 days advance notice of the closures.
Amazon Go had one of the best turkey pesto sandwiches you could buy for $6. It was my treat after driving back from the dog park. I felt sad after they closed that Go store. Coffee (Starbucks) was free with a minimum purchase of $5, which the sandwich covered. I miss that, but only that. There was literally nothing useful to buy on the go. All weird Amazon products, nothing close to 7-Eleven.
I’m in an interesting place. Here in Seattle I am two blocks from one of the largest Amazon Fresh stores. It was built on the former location of a local grocer. The construction was almost complete before Covid hit, but Amazon shuttered the store during that time. As a result there was no groceries in my neighborhood from 2018-2023.
Now it seems Amazon is going to leave us a grocery desert yet again.
They were piloting smart carts at the location. The cart scans your items so checking out you just push the cart through a scanner that weighs it. But this invention was like a microcosm of Amazon’s whole fuckup with groceries. The problem with the store wasn’t that I couldn’t check out fast enough, it’s that it was a shit grocery store. They had popular products but they were missing all the unpopular, low margin products you need to actually cook (baking powder, shortening, tomato paste, soy sauce…). They only hire non-union jobs program people at the registers because Amazon believes that cashier is a sub-human role.
The previous store had an owner who would wander the aisles and chat with customers. The new store has Europeans with clipboards who watch you as you shop.
The UFCW claims they represent at least 800,000 grocery workers across the US.
I had a job as a union worker in a supermarket, and am glad that's still available to others.
https://www.ufcw.org/actions/campaign/albertsons-and-safeway...
My brother has worked as a stocker for King Kullen in New York for 20 years and is a union worker.
In the Seattle area where the poster is from, pretty much all the grocery stores are unionized. Workers at big stores like Safeway, Fred Meyer, QFC, and Albertsons, and local stores PCC, Uwajimaya are represented by UFCW3000. https://ufcw3000.org/shop-union
Additionally, Teamsters 174 organizes a lot of the grocery freight workers. https://teamsters174.net/warehouse-and-grocery/
Jewel-Osco: https://www.local881ufcw.org/about-us/#local-881 Meijer and Kroger: https://ufcw951.org/about/
The more-expensive stores sometimes do. My friend's wife works for one, and the store is closing because it's too close to a discount grocery to get enough traffic to stay open. The union is making her transfer to a much further location or lose her seniority, for some nonsense reason involving the closer locations historically being part of a different union, despite them now all being the same one.
Most grocery stores in the US are still heavily union. I don't think the unions ever left the grocery stores.
Literally all the grocery stores in my Northeast US city are unionized.
Not to be rude but there’s 4 Amazon Fresh locations in the greater Seattle area and each of them is next to multiple other large/small grocery options.
For instance, the one in north Seattle (Shoreline) is within eyesight of a Safeway, a Sprouts, two international markets and a chef wholesaler.
The other three locations are similarly crowded with options.
What food desert are you referring to?
I wouldn’t describe central district as crowded with options…
It's literally highlighted on the map you sent: https://postimg.cc/Cn8BGP4S
There's no walkable grocery store in that area. My friend lives in the area and uses a wheelchair, and Amazon Fresh was the only actual grocery store she could go to.
As much as I'm hoping they do, I would be very surprised if they open a Whole Foods in that area.
> What food desert are you referring to?
His food desert that doesn’t exist.
Food deserts do exist, but Seattle's Central District is not one of them. This US government tool used to literally be called the "Food Desert Locator" until the current administration re-named it to "Food Access Research Atlas"
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-...
It's really the suburban areas of Seattle that develop food deserts, likely due to restrictive zoning for commercial properties and minimum lot-size requirements that make sure that every grocery store is a long SUV ride away from the cu-de-sac neighborhood.
If the term Food Desert offends you, I can gladly switch to calling it Food Apartheid instead.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/15/food-aparthe...
> Food Access Research Atlas
You just know at least five people within the administration, one of whom being Elon Musk, wanted to change "Atlas" to "Tool"
> They only hire non-union jobs program people at the registers because Amazon believes that cashier is a sub-human role.
The implication being that humans who aren't in a union are "sub-human" in your opinion? If so, that's pretty messed up man.
A giant, multinational, multi-trillion-dollar corporation that will only bargain with individual people living paycheck-to-paycheck? Huh, what a weird power imbalance!
Surely it doesn't have anything to do with their documented history of treating their blue-collar workforce like utter garbage.
I think Amazon are largely shitheads to their low level workers (and still assholes even to mid-level workers), and I am in no way defending them. I'm in fact sickened by them. I will never work for Amazon.
But the implication above was that the non-union employee is the "sub-human" option. I find that attitude pretty gross too. Humans are human whether they are union members or not.
This will forever be a masterpiece
I like Whole Foods because it feels warm and the food looks good. The Amazon stores felt like walking inside a vending machine and that is not how people want to buy dinner.
I thought they already did close them.
I know at some point they got caught basically paying people to watch cameras to figure out what products people we're grabbing. I'm sure were either at the point or very close to the point where AI can successfully do this basically 100% of the time.
So I doubt it's the tech aspect of this, more just the grossness a person feels walking into a store with Amazon's name on it. Compare this to whole foods.
I think the Go stores mostly bit the dust after that reveal, but they were also mostly small convenience store operations. I actually saw one at the airport recently, that's a situation where I can see it making sense as an option.
The Fresh stores are basically a conventional grocery store, with electronic tags for every item and quirky pricing. They also have "smart carts" with built in weight sensing and multiple cameras so you can basically put open bags in, say "ready to go" then shop by scanning a UPC before placing each item in the cart. Unscanned item? Error. Weight mismatch? Probably an error but I've never tried. The carts are running what looks like a Linux-based UI with some stuff in docker, I grabbed a picture of a shutdown screen on one not too long ago.
The technology lives on, as Amazon "Just Walk Out". But rather than general grocery stores, it is used for concessions at stadiums and places like that.
I guess it turned out that the need more human intervention than they hoped, so the cost is too high for regular stores. However at places where a premium can be charged for high throughput or a low friction experience then the cost of the human intervention can be recouped.
There was a concept Amazon Fresh store with “Just Walk Out” technology on Capitol Hill in Seattle. They closed it down a couple of years back but the brand was absolutely Amazon Fresh.
Amazon Fresh had no reason to exist. They closed down a great Whole Foods near me and replaced it with a store with minimal changes to safeway/albertsons. Heavy carts for automatic scanning that barely saved time at checkout.
I will miss the grab and go tech in the Amazon stores. I was hoping they would successfully manage to sell that to other stores and make the tech wide spread in bodegas, gas stations and 711s
Well, that article made me nervous for a second! I love my Amazon Fresh grocery delivery. I started using it during Covid, but could never go back. It's so nice having groceries feel automated instead of a semi-daily chore. I eat much healthier and the rationale for using DoorDash evaporated.
Absolutely zero interest in a physical version that lets me check-out easier, though. So, I can see why they're making this switch.
> It's so nice having groceries feel automated instead of a semi-daily chore
One of a my previous jobs had a grocery store on the way home. I took to stopping in pretty much daily. It allowed for a bit of decompression after work before coming home. It was very convenient to always have exactly what was needed for that night while being therapeutic at the same time. After switching jobs, losing that was probably the most noticeable thing about the new job
This was the more surprising bit for me: https://www.geekwire.com/2026/amazon-supersizes-its-walmart-...
Amazon straight up wants to just become Walmart. Or maybe Sears is a more apt comparison given their mail-order beginnings.
Not surprised. Unless the item is on sale (which can be very good deals) their pricing is no better than a standard supermarket and usually far more expensive than a Target or WalMart. And they quickly gave up on the scan and go where the smart shopping card read everything in the basket and automatically charged your Amazon account, so it was back to regular checkout.
Yeah, they've just closed the one near me. I think they underestimated how hard it would be, at least in the UK - the existing supermarket chains are already competitive, mostly pretty good, and people have surprisingly high brand loyalty to them. I don't think I've even talked to anyone who has shopped in Amazon Fresh, or even wanted to.
Wow, they just opened a brand new one in Philly less than two months ago. I've yet to shop there and I guess now I never will. It must have cost millions to clear that site and build a whole new building there. Just to abandon it. I wish I had money to waste like that.
Edit: it actually opened in August, so it was around for about six months instead of two.
They built one in my area a few years ago and then never opened it. It’s just been sitting vacant the entire time.
And Amazon also discontinuing Amazon One palm authentication services in whole foods. I wonder if these are related events. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46790734
Coincidentally(?) they are open their first big box retail store: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/01/09/amazon-plans-first-big-b...
I stopped into the Amazon Fresh in Broomall, PA, to check it out not too long ago. It just looks bland and dystopian from the outside, and not much about it is impressive from the inside. I've worked with computers and technology my whole life, and the entrance to the store just confused me. If I remember correctly, I had to scan the Amazon app on my phone to enter the building. Once inside, it felt like a warehouse; the aisles were too small, and the food selection wasn't even really that great. (From memory, it was a few years ago that I went)
All in all, it's a cool concept on paper with absolutely terrible execution.
Only went once, bought some snacks, and left.
Human nature probably prevents that from ever being a reality, at least at scale. In a tiny tight knit community where literally everybody knows everybody else maybe you could pull that off, but even then you have to get a bit lucky.
In a world where anonymity is a thing there will always be at least one inherent shithead who ruins it for everyone. Even if you do have a community where it's true, that can change anytime someone has a kid or someone moves in.
Curious thought - will they be shutting down other “just walk out” powered stuff like Hudson Nonstops in airports?
I also know some Amazon warehouses had an entire Just Walk Out powered concessions area in their breakroom for purchasing snacks in partnership with one of their canteen vendors.
They literally only put them in unaffordable areas. Like the only one I know is in a residential area of Southwalk in London not far from the TATE Modern museum. I don't even live in London.
Been in one once for the novelty as they've never been useful.
I noticed the other day the Amazon store near me has closed but it says a whole foods market is coming soon, which is another company they own. I wonder how many of them they’ll rebrand and keep in some form like that.
As one who has spent substantially since Amazon's inception, Amazon in recent years has become an unreliable supplier in my area. Much of the product sold by Amazon is sourced from China and until recently Amazon did little to distinguish name-brand products from knockoffs. That's why companies like J&J weren't making product available on the Amazon site. Amazon Prime is laughable here, frequently taking a week or longer. The local Whole Foods is a mere shadow of its previous incarnation. Of course, most of the bookstore alternatives have been driven out of business. The B&N strategy is more appropriate to competing with Books-a-Million than the old Borders. Overall, Amazon seems more focused on its movie/TV business than it does what created it. And Bezos? Well, it's obvious that righting the ship at Amazon isn't nearly as important as being a jet setting celebrity with a new younger wife and playing with his space ahips. And BTW, I'm in a major city, not some rural town.
What! I loved the Amazon fresh in my neighborhood. It was way better than any other grocery store. I can’t believe this. I hope it at least gets converted to a Whole Foods
I have never been to an Amazon Fresh store. But I do remember that French chain that trolled Amazon with their humans first approach.
I don't know what your life/lives are like, and far be it for me to tell you how to live, but if your schedule allows it try shopping later at night.
I show up at CostCo, on weekdays, like 30 minutes before closing time and it's _wonderful_. Few people, nobody blocking lanes while they consider their choices, etc. Same goes for Safeway, Fred Meyer, Trader Joe's, etc.
It doesn't work so great if you've got young kids, or you want to come home from work and just stay home (reasonable), but it's worth considering :)
I went to one once, and it still worked like a regular grocery store, too. The only reason I never went back was because they were expensive and in an awkward location. There were some items only discounted to Prime members, but for everything else, you could forgo the technology and Amazon integration and pay with cash or a card. It's not like the Amazon Go stores where you have to use their system.
Of course it failed, nobody want to shop at a limited selection with mandatory signing up amazon store that closes at like 8.
But a 24/7 data driven store that is a last resort would have succeeded.
Put slop bowls at business areas, Junk food where there are clubs for drunk people.
Moving season in college town, put some stationary and some tools for DIY stuff.
In valentines cheap wine and chocolate for the singles, and flowers with top rated gifts for couples.
Amazon keeps shutting Restaurants, their retail stores, etc., but I for one am glad they are at least trying. I agree that the fiasco around the Indians running the show was a PR nightmare for their idea, but large companies running startup like ideas should be encouraged rather than disparaged (and I am no fan of Amazon just to be clear). I think this is one of those ideas where execution failed. If you are a busy worker, it is great to just head there and grab what you need, and walk out. Just faster all around.
Another one of these ideas that was the future but for various reasons wasn't.
I honestly think in some ways, going to a store is about being around other people, the same as going to a cafe, not necessarily talking, but just being in the presence of others seems to be what many people crave. I largely think it's the appeal of shopping malls.
Disappointing. The shopping experience is mediocre and prices/quality are no better than other local supermarkets.
However, I love my local Amazon Fresh store because it's a super convenient Amazon return location...
Has anyone used their go stores? I'm curious how the experience felt from a consumer standpoint. Do you feel welcomed or more like a thief?
I remember WAY back in the day when Arby's implemented touch screen ordering (on CRTs!) and it was a very quirky process. An Arby's employee would sit behind the counter and stare at you while you spent 5 minutes poking a CRT display. Very slow and very impersonal. They discontinued them in a short period of time.