Yesterday the wife and I made our first visit to the Amazon Fresh store for the first time. Looks like they only have a few stores in the DC metro area, Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, and one outside Philadelphia right now. Interesting experience.
For one thing, there was nobody there. I think this store has been open since August. There were a few employees hanging around, but there was maybe only 5-6 other people in the store shopping besides us. Granted, Wednesday evening during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, but still, it felt very lonely in there. That probably won’t last long.
As far as the store itself, it was like a less fancy Whole Foods with lower prices. There was some Whole Foods 365 branded stuff, but there was also “amazon” branded stuff, like frozen pizzas. Otherwise there wasn’t really anything you wouldn’t find at Safeway or Meijer or wherever.
The big thing is no checkout. There is a turnstile-like gate at the entrance and you open the amazon app on your phone (or insert a credit card into the machine), scan the QR code on your phone, and the gate opens and you’re in. There are probably several thousand little cameras hanging down from the ceiling looking at every item. I took this photo:
I’m not sure how exactly it works logistically on their end, but as a customer you just take stuff off the shelf and place it into your cart or directly into a bag, and when you’re finished you just walk out. They email you a link to your receipt the next day. I was careful to only touch stuff I intended to buy. I did not experiment with taking stuff off the shelf then putting it back. You scan out with your phone at the exit the same way you did at the entrance. I got my receipt this morning, via the amazon app. It appears to be accurate.
I’m curious how automated it really is, and if a person ultimately has to watch me walk around the store and confirm each “purchase.” I can’t imagine it’s that labor-intensive. It was an interesting experience, and stuff like the hot bar was already shut down when we were there so we didn’t really get the “full” store experience, but I think I got the gist of it.
I’m not yet convinced this is the future of grocery shopping. I’ve worked in the grocery business before, and it’s a surprisingly low-tech affair. This looked very expensive to set up and maintain, but then again I’ve been out of that business for almost 15 years now, what do I know.