Greetings from the Amazon Fresh Supermarket!

Cafe Society
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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.

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There’s one in Elk Grove, CA, too (Elk Grove is adjacent to Sacramento). I haven’t tried it out yet.

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That’s super interesting. You don’t scan anything at the store? Do the cameras figure out what you’ve taken or do they use RFIDs? I wonder what happens if you take something out of your cart and then put it back or put it on a completely different shelf.

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According to Pocket-Lint :-

These stores work by using the same types of technologies found in self-driving cars, such as computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning.

This technology can detect when products are taken or returned to the shelves and keeps track of them in your virtual cart. When you leave the store with your goods, your Amazon account is charged and you are sent a receipt.

Yeah, right. I don’t even trust those self scan checkouts in ‘ordinary’ supermarkets.

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I use self scan when I shop and I routinely find I have double scanned an item. Sometimes just waving the phone around while in scan mode will pick up random UPC’s.

I’d want to be able to see my receipt on the phone before checking out to double check for accuracy.

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Yeah it seems like a pretty serious issue that you don’t get a receipt right away. I’m not wholly uncomfortable with it, but I can see how a lot of people would be.

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I’ve been self-scanning for years and have never double-scanned anything. My problems, such as they are, have been either accidentally failing to scan something and getting caught in a random check, or, more often, taking three of something and scanning one three times, only to discover that the computer treats each flavour separately.

As for the Amazon idea, I can see it catching on in town centres where people may want to shop in a hurry. Less so for a weekly shop in the burbs where the trolleys are more loaded and time is less important.

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The future is here. I remember this commercial from 2001 or so:

I think their checkout algorithm won’t care at all if you behaved exactly like that guy in the commercial. Has anybody tested that yet?

Some people might not find this new tech easy to adapt to. An SNL fake commercial from earlier this year:

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At some point my wife and I were in different aisles getting different stuff, on the same account.

I’m curious how accurately it could track a group of like 10 people collecting things from around the store simultaneously and then putting them into the same cart at the end.

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I asked someone who is a heavy Amazon-services user if I can shop there without linking to an Amazon account and was told I can. However, the responses in this thread have me questioning whether this is true. Can I shop here on a cash basis?

This one is on you. As you know, these aren’t the same and the store needs to keep track of inventory for stocking and analysis purposes. For example, I recently bought two bell peppers. I put them in the same produce bag but the cashier correctly mentioned, “One red, one orange.” They were the same price and it would have been a problem if they were sold by weight instead of per pepper.

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Did it give you one final bill at the end or two? Did you both scan in at the beginning or just one of you? I’m fascinated by this. I’d love to stress test the system.

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I don’t know about actual cash, but the electronic gate thingy at the entrance had a separate slot for a credit/debit card. It seemed like you could just swipe in a card and then go shop, but I don’t know how, or if, you’d ever get a receipt. Perhaps they can generate one for you on the spot at the Customer Service desk, I don’t know.

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Only I scanned in at the entrance. Everything was on the one receipt that I got, this morning.

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I was musing about this recently when I was grocery shopping. I realized that I haven’t one of those hanging scales in the produce area in years. Every individual piece of fruit has a little sticker now. (I read a bit of trivia recently that those labels are edible which makes a lot of sense).

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I’ve only had Amazon Fresh delivered. I’ve shopped at an Amazon Style store, though.

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I have scales (electronic) at my Kroger. Even though the produce has stickers, lots of things are by the pound.

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It’s irritating when I don’t catch it. Then I have to visit the cust serv desk and explain how I intended to buy one six pack of beer but charged myself for two. Or the time I scanned the 15 pack of Founders Centennial but left it on the shelf and got home with no beer but it’s on my receipt. Sometimes I think well I’ll walk out with a tenderloin unscanned then we’re even. No I can’t do that I’d rather face the service desk. But I’ve never been challenged on owning up to an honest mistake.

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I don’t remember seeing one hanging lately (they’re benchtop now) but I think retailers are required to have a scale labeled ‘for customer use’ near produce and other random weight products like bulk nuts and self-scooped shrimp.

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The no-checkout system would seem to have completely solved the shoplifting issue, I’ll give them that. It’s basically impossible. Condoms, batteries, razors, baby formula, these things that are all usually behind lock and key at other stores were just sitting out in the open like any other product. I suppose you could be shopping with a stolen card or stolen phone, but that seems like a whole other level of crime at that point. I’m interested to see if this thing lasts and if similar systems might be implemented in other stores.

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It almost seemed like a proof of concept that they could sell to other businesses…