Amazon is cracking further into the $800 billion U.S. grocery industry, keeping the likes of Walmart, Kroger, 7-Eleven and Instacart on their toes.
The online behemoth on Tuesday is opening its first, full-size, cashierless grocery store. Five years in the making, the Amazon Go Grocery is in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, in the Amazon corporate headquarters’ backyard.
Amazon has been working on the space since 2015. At 10,400 square feet, the store at 610 E. Pike St. incorporates the same technology found in the two dozen or so Amazon Go locations. Shoppers can walk in, scan a QR code from their Amazon mobile app at a turnstile, carry or add whatever they want to their baskets throughout the store, and walk out when they are finished. Zero human interaction is required, though the store will staff a couple dozen people to help stock shelves and answer shoppers’ questions.
“You’re seeing a lot of big strides in [this] store,” Cameron Janes, vice president of Amazon’s physical retail division, told CNBC during a tour of the grocery store on Monday. “Produce is a big example of that.”
“We’re just getting started here,” he said, declining to comment on how many of these grocery stores Amazon may open. “I think what we’re trying to do here — and with all of our physical stores — is really work backwards from the customer, and deliver some differentiation.”
The space in Seattle is still smaller than a typical U.S. grocery store that’s about 40,000 square feet. Amazon Go Grocery is meant to stock shoppers’ kitchen cabinets, and help them with dinner, while Amazon Go stores are meant to serve bustling business districts during the breakfast and lunch hours, Janes said. He called Amazon Go Grocery a “neighborhood market” of sorts.
The new store is stocked with about 5,000 items, including fresh produce, dairy, packaged seafood, meats, bakery treats like doughnuts, household goods like paper towels plus meal kits and a full liquor selection with wines and beer.
Some items, mainly in the produce department, are sourced from Whole Foods’ providers. Items from national brands as well as a variety of Amazon’s private labels, such as Happy Belly, are also for sale. The store includes a self-service coffee bar.
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