He noted that the German supermarket chain Aldi has been opening around 200 US stores per year in recent years. “It doesn't seem like they're moving terribly quickly with stores,” said Patrick Fisher, a DC-based grocery industry analyst, in an interview last August. Meanwhile, the number of Amazon Fresh locations (not all of which have Just Walk Out technology) has grown from 17 stores last August to 24 now, according to Amazon’s website. Six months later, there are 24 now stores. They wound up opening a tiny fraction of that number.īut last August I noted that the number of those stores actually declined slightly from 25 to 22. Bloomberg reported in 2018 that Amazon was aiming to open 3,000 Amazon Go stores by 2021. Amazon first employed Just Walk Out technology in Amazon Go convenience stores around 2018. One of my big questions about Amazon’s technology is why they aren’t scaling it up more quickly. Wages for these workers is one of the biggest costs of any supermarket-8 to 10 percent of revenue, according to one expert-so being able to reduce headcount will be a big competitive advantage. On top of that, it likely saves Amazon money by allowing them to hire fewer checkout workers. The addition of Just Walk Out technology significantly improves the customer experience by allowing customers to skip the checkout lane. "On rare occasions where a customer may find a discrepancy on their receipt, they can request a refund via the digital receipt in their email, or in the Whole Foods Market or Amazon app up to 30 days after their purchase.” “Just Walk Out technology is highly accurate," an Amazon spokesperson told me by email. Not only could they have gotten more money that way, the feedback might help them improve their software. I thought it was a little odd that Amazon didn’t give me a chance to tell them that they should have charged me for ginger instead. Luckily, it took just three clicks to tell Amazon that this charge was bogus, and my money was refunded with no hassle. Amazon hadn’t charged me for the ginger-presumably because it got it confused with the basil. I had purchased a container of fresh ginger, which sat right next to the basil. I’d taken photos of all my selections and I quickly figured out what had gone wrong. But I was charged $2.99 for the basil shown at right. I picked up a package of ginger, priced at $1.99. Bananas, for example, cost $1.19 for a six-banana bunch. One big change was to avoid pricing items by weight.
Whole Foods did make a few adjustments for the no-checkout approach. Almost all the shelves were well stocked. The Glover Park Whole Foods didn’t seem to have this problem. It seemed like the store had supply-chain issues it hadn’t entirely sorted out. When I visited the DC Amazon Fresh store last year, I noticed that there were a lot of bare shelves. There’s an extensive range of prepared foods, meat and cheese counters, and plenty of baked goods. The store re-opened in February, and it has everything you’d expect at a Whole Foods location. That led to a years-long legal dispute with the store’s landlord that was settled in 2020. The previous incarnation of the store closed in 2017 “after health inspectors identified issues with rodents and pests,” in the words of the Washington Post. The produce section of the Glover Park Whole Foods. So last Friday, I traveled to DC’s Glover Park neighborhood to check out the first Whole Foods to feature Amazon’s no-checkout technology. At the time I wondered if Amazon was struggling to scale the technology up to a full-sized supermarket. The Amazon Fresh store I visited last year was around 7,300 square feet-relatively small for a grocery store.
Checkout food stores software#
Then you “just walk out,” and Amazon’s AI software figures out what you took. Cameras on the ceilings and scales on the shelves detect what you’ve taken. Once inside, you shop normally: you take items off the shelves and put them in a regular shopping cart or basket. To use Just Walk Out technology, you identify yourself at the entrance using Amazon’s mobile app.
Checkout food stores full#
Long-time readers may remember that my very first piece for Full Stack Economics last August was about the opening of an Amazon Fresh grocery store with this technology in Washington DC. When I saw the news that Amazon was opening a Whole Foods location in Washington DC with Just Check Out technology, I knew I had to go see it for myself.
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