According to the AP, Amazon is opening its first cashier-less supermarket, where shoppers can grab milk or eggs and walk out without waiting in line or opening their wallets. It’s the latest sign that Amazon is serious about shaking up the $800 billion grocery industry.
At the new store, which opened in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle, shoppers scan a smartphone app to enter the store. Cameras and sensors track what’s taken off shelves. Items are charged to an Amazon account after leaving.
Called Amazon Go Grocery, the new store is an expansion of its two-year-old chain of 25 Amazon Go convenience stores. It’s 10,400 square feet—more than five times the size of the convenience stores—and stocks much more beyond the sodas and sandwiches found at Amazon Go.
Cameron Janes, who helps oversee Amazon’s physical stores, said the technology had to be tweaked to account for how people squeeze tomatoes to test for ripeness or rummage through avocados to find just the right one. Nothing at the store is weighed. One blood orange goes for 53 cents; a banana is 19 cents.
Amazon is not new to groceries. It made a splash in 2017 when it bought Whole Foods and its 500 stores. It’s also been expanding its online grocery delivery service. But it’s still far behind rival Walmart, the nation’s largest grocer, which has more than 4,700 stores. Walmart’s online grocery service has also been popular with customers, who buy online and then drive to a store to pick up their order.
Amazon also plans to open another type of grocery store in Los Angeles sometime this year, but the company said it won’t use the cashier-less technology at that location and has kept other details under wraps. The company declined to say if it plans to open more Amazon Go Grocery stores, and said there are no plans to bring the technology to Whole Foods stores.
Hoping to catch up to Amazon, other retailers and startups are racing to bring similar cashier-less technology to stores. 7-Eleven said it is testing a cashier-less store for employees inside its offices in Irving, TX.
According to the AP, Amazon is opening its first cashier-less supermarket, where shoppers can grab milk or eggs and walk out without waiting in line or opening their wallets. It’s the latest sign that Amazon is serious about shaking up the $800 billion grocery industry.
At the new store, which opened in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle, shoppers scan a smartphone app to enter the store. Cameras and sensors track what’s taken off shelves. Items are charged to an Amazon account after leaving.
Called Amazon Go Grocery, the new store is an expansion of its two-year-old
chain of 25 Amazon Go convenience stores. It’s 10,400 square feet—more than five times the size of the convenience stores—and stocks much more beyond the sodas and sandwiches found at Amazon Go.
Cameron Janes, who helps oversee Amazon’s physical stores, said the technology had to be tweaked to account for how people squeeze tomatoes to test for ripeness or rummage through avocados to find just the right one. Nothing at the store is weighed. One blood orange goes for 53 cents; a banana is 19 cents.
Amazon is not new to groceries. It made a splash in 2017 when it bought Whole Foods and its 500 stores. It’s also been expanding its online grocery delivery service. But it’s still far behind rival Walmart, the nation’s largest grocer, which has more than 4,700 stores. Walmart’s online grocery service has also been popular with customers, who buy online and then drive to a store to pick up their order.
Amazon also plans to open another type of grocery store in Los Angeles sometime this year, but the company said it won’t use the cashier-less technology at that location and has kept other details under wraps. The company declined to say if it plans to open more Amazon Go Grocery stores, and said there are no plans to bring the technology to Whole Foods stores.
Hoping to catch up to Amazon, other retailers and startups are racing to bring similar cashier-less technology to stores. 7-Eleven said it is testing a cashier-less store for employees inside its offices in Irving, TX.
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