Key Points
- Five years in the making, the first Amazon Go Grocery store is opening Tuesday in Seattle.
- It’s Amazon’s first full-size, cashierless grocery store, expanding the technology in its Amazon Go shops, which are more like convenience stores.
- The store is about 10,400 square feet and stocks roughly 5,000 items, including fresh produce, meats and alcohol.
- “We’re not trying to be Whole Foods,” Amazon’s Cameron Janes said. “We’re not trying to replace them.”
Excerpt
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.”
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