Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by veteran+ »

Excellent observations by all.

I would add that F&E was a whole different animal with a myriad of issues and extreme hubris being at the front of the line.
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by ClownLoach »

storewanderer wrote: October 31st, 2021, 11:11 pm
ClownLoach wrote: October 31st, 2021, 10:49 pm
This is why even though I think they are now floundering on Fresh they will happily spend a fortune to fix it. Even if it means closing every box, gutting the interiors and starting again from scratch as we saw Fresh and Easy do a few times in their final days.

With the stock of Amazon having so much of a basis on 401K plans, pension plans, etc. again the risk to the economy is massive if something really tips the boat with Amazon.
Also your comment about Target Managers hired by Amazon who do nothing but walk around the store in groups talking all day... I guess that is common?

Also why would Amazon hire Target managers to run grocery stores and not move people over from Whole Foods? Target's weakness and underperformance in grocery is well documented.
In the Amazon Fresh stores they are trying to implement the same kind of backstock location and pick system that Target uses. All overstock is scanned into a location and the system tells them what needs to be stocked in real time. The system is supposed to tell the order pickers to take from the backroom and overstock first so that the shelves aren't empty for the walk in customer. Also the little secret of the Dash cart is that it is scanning the shelves for out of stocks - so as a customer you are actually doing the stocking teams work! The only thing is that the typical Target backroom is larger than the entire Amazon Fresh store, so it really does not translate. And the violent level of productivity expectation leads the order pickers to ignore the protocols and just empty the store shelves to fill customer delivery and pickup orders. Thus the store standard is abysmal.

I think the idea was that if they can get this kind of system going well at Fresh they could roll it over to the Whole Foods side later to trim labor expense. Despite the fact that Amazon took over - Whole Foods was already trying to make cutbacks at the store level as they were too top heavy. Many changes were made around the same time as the acquisition, but there are still many, many people making decisions and performing processes that Amazon would like to see automated. They want the systems to manage the inventory and order goods for example but Whole Foods still has Department Managers who complete the orders - they are just more restricted in what they can do then they were in the past when they could source their own goods and sign vendors themselves on a store by store basis. Amazon does not want any of this happening at Whole Foods because they don't want to pay for it. The Whole Foods managers then would be a problem for Amazon Fresh - the only thing that they have in common is the Prime loyalty program and 365 store brand. Fresh doesn't even run the same POS system as Whole Foods - and that WF POS was installed after the Amazon acquisition (its a NCR system). Fresh is using something ugly and proprietary that was developed in house by Amazon. Different systems, different operating model, completely different leadership model. Bringing a WF manager to Fresh would not work at all.


Locally I know of about half a dozen Target managers who went to Amazon Fresh (one already regretted the decision and left after the first month open for customers). Apparently the Amazon recruiters were offering big pay incentives, path to promotion (today's SM is tomorrow's DM once we add more stores), etc. So basically they are getting paid significantly more than they did to run a giant Target store - and Target is not a low paying retailer once you're at the Executive Team Leader or above level. They pay the ETL positions more than most big box Store Managers make for Assistant Manager level responsibility. Store Team Leader (SM) makes what a typical big box DM makes although the bonuses are not as good. Target seems to believe that the Store Team Leader needs to walk around with other ETLs and Team Leads to mentor and coach them. They spend a lot of time in the office as well and do lots of meetings at the district hub store. From what I've heard the ETLs and Team Leaders would rather be left alone to do their work instead of getting "quality time" standing around listening to their Store Manager reading this week's leadership talking points such as "How to delegate to employees."

None of this translates well from Target to Amazon Fresh. I could understand if they were picking off the SM from the small format Target stores as they seem more relevant, run a lower volume and have to wear more hats. But the small format Store Managers are paid the same as the ETL (Assistants) at a full size Target, only incentive is a larger bonus. So Amazon can't really offer any incentive for the small format Target SM to leave.

And I'm sure the plan to recruit heavily from Target is short term. They were planning on stealing the institutional knowledge of these Managers to adjust and adapt the operating model. But then they would be able to hire less experienced managers to run the store at a lower pay level if all the processes are in place for it to "run itself" like a Target does.

Clearly every strategy has backfired. I'm disappointed because I really believed early on that Amazon Fresh would be a winner. But I think it is proving the case that they should just open dark stores with the same product in urban industrial parks and deliver from them. Just like they are already doing with the delivery hubs. They also would not need to pay the premium rent for good retail space.
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by TW-Upstate NY »

Amazon has their finger in WAY TOO MANY pies at this point. The answer is this-do one thing and do it well.
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by mbz321 »

I wonder how long until my 'local' (so far their only location in PA) Amazon Fresh will last. The whole experience is just rather lackluster. Prices are 'meh' (they have been sending out a paper sales flyer, but even those specials aren't anything exceptional), the selection, the stuff that was actually in stock anyways, is a bit too curated, the Dash carts are very gimmicky and not really a huge time-saver, and a lot of the prepared foods are just insanely overpriced. On my last visit (and probably my last for a while unless they send out some desperation coupons again), I had to check the dates of things very thoroughly...several store brand cream cheeses were already past the date. I missed checking the sell by dates on the eggs, until I got home and realized it was only two days out (yeah, I know they are good for a very long time after that, but still). I never had to do that in any normal grocery store. With this particular location surrounded by a half dozen other options for groceries, there is nothing to really draw me in.
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by ClownLoach »

mbz321 wrote: November 1st, 2021, 8:10 pm I wonder how long until my 'local' (so far their only location in PA) Amazon Fresh will last. The whole experience is just rather lackluster. Prices are 'meh' (they have been sending out a paper sales flyer, but even those specials aren't anything exceptional), the selection, the stuff that was actually in stock anyways, is a bit too curated, the Dash carts are very gimmicky and not really a huge time-saver, and a lot of the prepared foods are just insanely overpriced. On my last visit (and probably my last for a while unless they send out some desperation coupons again), I had to check the dates of things very thoroughly...several store brand cream cheeses were already past the date. I missed checking the sell by dates on the eggs, until I got home and realized it was only two days out (yeah, I know they are good for a very long time after that, but still). I never had to do that in any normal grocery store. With this particular location surrounded by a half dozen other options for groceries, there is nothing to really draw me in.
Sounds like not only are the stores not working well for walk in customers but they aren't getting any delivery business to help sell through the product. Sounds like another Target team leader of something unrelated like athletic goods is running the fresh foods business for Amazon there.

Target is the only store I find that is incapable of properly stocking foods to rotate dates. I don't think they have any process to check for this. They must not have dedicated foods stockers, so they do not understand that they have to put the freshest item in the back of the shelf which takes longer. I find about 75% of the time the freshest date is in the front for produce and dairy. I wouldn't touch their meats as they use the carbon monoxide treatment to prevent them from changing color. Funny that Target has been trying to focus on healthy and organic, yet they have artificially preserved meats in carbon monoxide and a limited assortment of color treated seafood. Even Walmart isn't that bad - nobody else in Southern California is doing this.
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by pseudo3d »

ClownLoach wrote: November 1st, 2021, 7:45 am
storewanderer wrote: October 31st, 2021, 11:28 pm
I also think Amazon is having a major impact on the labor force that would typically be taking retail/restaurant jobs at the present time by paying a bit more and with the flex scheduling, etc. models. If Amazon bleeds the labor out of these grocery competitors then they could win the grocery business by default and on their terms.
I agree 1000%, and this is a much more massive issue than anyone else wants to give them credit for.

They do not have the hiring difficulties retailers and restaurants do... Except in the Fresh stores. And I think I know why.

I cannot believe the abuse my employees have endured on a daily basis in our stores since the start of the pandemic. They were very resilient at first because they loved their bosses, the product, and the brand. However the constant harassment, temper tantrums, profanity and even violence took their toll. And all of this was happening during the massive Amazon expansion of local delivery hubs and urban facilities. Amazon was the reason to move to the remote areas of the Inland Empire in SoCal as you could make a decent living with the much lower cost of housing and seemingly unlimited growth of warehouses. You could start and work your way up the ladder as two warehouses became four, became eight, and so on exponentially. Similar stories have happened in other areas where Amazon placed their massive facilities.

But now Amazon has buildings all over the place in the urban areas. They're right in the thick of local industrial parks, dead malls, closed strip malls and even buying out unusual facilities like storage facilities to tear down and build these new local buildings that simplify their logistics operation. They're paying more than restaurants and retailers, even if it's just a couple of dollars more. But there are also hours consistently, and extra hours during the holidays instead of seasonal employees flooding the schedule. The majority of the employees are full time. And the part timers are true part time by choice working the flex schedule system where they choose the shift they want.

This is the real silent killer. Retailers that have forced a 100% part time model on non supervisory employees are paying the price. Most part time retail employees are working in two or three stores to try to maintain full time hours, which was resulting in scheduling problems as they would call out at the job they liked the least (and nobody is managing attendance due to COVID, they just lie and say they have a fever of 103). That was bad but then Amazon dropped a delivery hub nearby and guess what happens? Now you get one real, full time job. You quit all of your part time jobs. You make more money and you have more free time because you're not having to drive from job 1 to job 2 to job 3.

But that is only the beginning. In that facility you don't have the customer. The same customer who spit in your face when you politely told them the state or whoever is requiring you to wear a mask, or not drink your Big Gulp in the store. The customer who said "f___ you" when you told them they too have to wait in line due to government mandated capacity limits. And then shoved you out of the way and barged into the store as if they weren't going to be prosecuted for battery (yes this happened and we did press charges). A Manager who just lost her mother to COVID at her first day working after the funeral - who was screamed at when she asked a customer to wear a mask and was told that COVID is a lie and nobody is dying of it. And so on. The traumatic experiences my employees shared were completely horrifying, and my stores are, let's just say, a place you go to have fun and be inspired. Not a grocery or drugstore where you buy essentials. So if my employees were treated like they were human garbage while selling fun products, I can't imagine how much worse it was elsewhere.

So the abused employee who doesn't want to be in that kind of terrible environment finds their escape at the Amazon delivery hub or other local facility. Two or three of these part time jobs are now open elsewhere. The retail stores and restaurants are decimated of staff, and you see things like the General Manager on the cash register alone, or taking orders at dinnertime at a restaurant.

Quite frankly, the abusive customers are getting what they deserve when they go into a understaffed retailer or restaurant. They made it that way by treating the help so terribly. And as has been the history of the United States so many times, the downtrodden and abused rise up and say no more. They're not doing it as a group as in the past, that's why we aren't seeing mass union drives etc., they're doing it one at a time as they exit the customer facing retail and restaurant business. The lousy treatment by the part time employer was mildly tolerable for years. But when the customer turned on the part time employee, that was what pushed them out the door. And Amazon was waiting for them with open doors.
Even as a current retail/restaurant worker myself (and yes, customers do suck), a lot of this reads from a perspective from a bitter (ex-)worker. Furthermore, from what I've heard of Amazon warehouses, despite not having customers, there's extremely tight deadlines on packing things, to the extent that the company had to apologize about denying that 'pee bottles' existed.

With a dearth of blue collar industrial jobs for decades, Amazon.com is at least fulfilling that end, even if it's low-end distribution center work. However, that's not really pertaining to the topic at hand, and I'm sure that at the Amazon Fresh stores (which are non-union, for better or for worse) they still take a rather liberal interpretation at the "customer is always right" mantra.

From what I've seen in this thread, Amazon Fresh is still an entirely different operation from WFM right down to different POS systems, and despite seemingly indefinite resources can't seem to put enough into its few Amazon Fresh so it behaves and looks like a top-notch Albertsons/Safeway or Kroger.

Amazon also needs to realize that running a store like a warehouse and running a store like a grocery store are at odds with each other. In a warehouse, you don't need to worry about things being pushed to the front of the shelf, you don't need to worry about endcaps, you don't need to worry about displaying fresh products. The stores that do advertise themselves as "warehouse" stores or have warehouse-like features (such as Aldi) still put presentation into their stores and, as all warehouse stores have done, advertise lower prices than just about everybody else.

If Amazon went with more of a "discount warehouse" image with prices to match, they could both excuse some of the criticisms of their store and carve out a niche instead of going directly against more established competitors.

Perhaps Amazon already realizes that Amazon Fresh is doomed, and those 30k square feet "department stores" that were talked about a few months ago will be their replacement...would easily fill the real estate with near-identical footprints...
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by mjhale »

I've been following this thread with interest as there is an Amazon Fresh location close to opening near me.

Based on the comments here it seems that once again there is this assertion that Amazon is going to completely destroy all of the traditional grocers with some form of the Amazon Fresh stores even with all of the faults mentioned. The usual reasons have been mentioned but now we are adding in too many part time employees in retail and mistreatment by customers among other things that has led to retail employees going to work for Amazon in non-front facing positions. I don't deny the crazy out there on the customer end. The pandemic has only amplified the customer I'm right, you're wrong, serve me like a servant attitude among some people towards retail employees. When I worked in retail way back when I envied the cash office, accounting and special order people who had essentially office jobs within a retail store while the rest of us were left to deal with everything from the nicest people you'd ever meet to the devil reincarnated.

With all of this said, suppose Amazon did buy another large retailer or decimate the retail grocery business. How is that good for the consumer? We now have essentially only a few large grocers (Albertsons, Kroger, Ahold/Delhaize) who own hundreds of their own stores under different banners they have bought over the years. Somehow through public policy and customer apathy we have allowed the big to get bigger and the small to either get bought or become a victim of fill in the blank large retailer. Certainly we have a few strong local or regional chains. But we once had those in most areas not just some. Amazon would love for you to buy everything from them. What price does that have? Even less competition as we centralize our buying from them whether out of convenience, loyalty or oh my I can't leave my house because of the virus doesn't help anyone. We have a few large chains doing a lot of things mediocre. We have to accept it because we don't have any other choice in a lot of cases. We forgot that the local chain really does support the local community. We all talk about buying locally but then we don't. Those employees who we treat or mistreat also live and spend in our communities. If the companies we work for and shop at weren't these huge faceless, cog machines we would have store managers who know their employees and customers and chain management that actually know their stores (I was blown away as a teen that Izzy Cohen CEO of Giant-MD was bagging some groceries I was getting but he visited a different Giant store several times a week for years). When everyone cares about each other the mood and environment is totally different. But now we have a shopping environment of this is all I've got so I deal with it. If we are at that point and Amazon steamrolls everyone except maybe Walmart do we really want a world where those are our only two options?
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by veteran+ »

Eruditely stated!

Thank you :D
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by mbz321 »

Just an experience update at my local Amazon Fresh. So they mailed out another 'desperation coupon' again....$10 off $20 or $20 off $50 valid for an almost three week period. (Each offer is supposed to be one time use, but if you scan it on the dash cart or scan it from your phone on the customer-facing QR scanner, one will be none the wiser.) You would think a company like Amazon would be able to figure out how to distribute a one-time-use code, no?

Speaking of such, I noticed new signs that said 'limit 1 coupon per family/day'. The customer in front of me had the physical coupon, but it was slightly torn so the cashier refused to accept it. The two people before him also were using coupons. This seems to be the only way they are bringing people in at this point.

I was going to use a Dash cart but the 'system was offline' as I was told when I tried to grab one. Not so good that their biggest gimmick wasn't operating. Besides the people in the single open checkout lane (out of 12 or so manned register stations), the place was a ghost town---of course I went around dinner time on a Tuesday so not exactly peak shopping hour, but a lot slower than it should be.

Still a lot of noticeable out of stocks and several dairy items I picked up that were close-dated and/or not rotated properly. And pricing that has gotten worse....almost $9 for a pack of regular store-brand bacon, and a $9 very basic looking chef's salad in the prepared foods area, for example. Maybe those prices work elsewhere, but not here in Pennsylvania when there is a half dozen other food retailers in the vicinity of this store. I know food costs have gone up, but not that much!
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by storewanderer »

mbz321 wrote: November 9th, 2021, 4:54 pm Just an experience update at my local Amazon Fresh. So they mailed out another 'desperation coupon' again....$10 off $20 or $20 off $50 valid for an almost three week period. (Each offer is supposed to be one time use, but if you scan it on the dash cart or scan it from your phone on the customer-facing QR scanner, one will be none the wiser.) You would think a company like Amazon would be able to figure out how to distribute a one-time-use code, no?

Speaking of such, I noticed new signs that said 'limit 1 coupon per family/day'. The customer in front of me had the physical coupon, but it was slightly torn so the cashier refused to accept it. The two people before him also were using coupons. This seems to be the only way they are bringing people in at this point.

I was going to use a Dash cart but the 'system was offline' as I was told when I tried to grab one. Not so good that their biggest gimmick wasn't operating. Besides the people in the single open checkout lane (out of 12 or so manned register stations), the place was a ghost town---of course I went around dinner time on a Tuesday so not exactly peak shopping hour, but a lot slower than it should be.

Still a lot of noticeable out of stocks and several dairy items I picked up that were close-dated and/or not rotated properly. And pricing that has gotten worse....almost $9 for a pack of regular store-brand bacon, and a $9 very basic looking chef's salad in the prepared foods area, for example. Maybe those prices work elsewhere, but not here in Pennsylvania when there is a half dozen other food retailers in the vicinity of this store. I know food costs have gone up, but not that much!
These prices may work in CA in perhaps the bay area. Not even sure where else. I think even OR/WA has enough competition that this won't work. PA- the entire east coast really- too much competition; this won't work. Florida- there is an interesting thought- might work there.

I thought the point of these though was to fulfill online orders. Could this be a sign online grocery is fading off and more customers are returning to in-store shopping?
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