Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by ClownLoach »

pseudo3d wrote: November 1st, 2021, 11:56 pm
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...
Never worked for them. Just well connected.
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by Bagels »

ClownLoach wrote: October 29th, 2021, 3:10 pm I think four things have gone wrong for Amazon.First, the inflation pressures on pricing everywhere create the illusion, right or wrong, that these stores opened with low prices then jacked them through the roof later. When you are trying to change consumer habits this works against you in every way. Plus if the consumer had stopped shopping another store they didn't see the price increase there when it happened.I think that the tide is turning against Amazon right now and they need to do something to stop the bleeding, fast.
Inflation pressures? :lol: When the Irvine location first opened, Amazon guaranteed the lowest price in town on a gallon of milk, or it was free. Within months - if not weeks - the guarantee had disappeared and the price was hiked from $2.66 to $3.49 (the highest in town). Meanwhile, the wholesale price of milk dropped. Point is, Amazon began raising prices well before heavy inflation hit. And on many items, prices changed frequently -- a 16 oz. jar of Happy Belly Peanut butter was $1.25 on my first visit, $2.19 on my next, then $1.89, etc.

Let's be clear: each of these stores opened to a huge media blitz and (for the initial locations) long lines just to enter the stores. Right off the bat, Amazon had a consumer base other retailers could only dream about... then they blew it. The true reasons these stores are failing are more along the lines of:
-- while the Smart Carts are unique, the overall shopping experience isn't much different than other retailers, including Ralphs and Albertsons/Vons;
-- they don't bother with loss leaders that drag many people into Ralphs and Albertsons (instead, marketing issues tons of coupons in which a small % of consumers are redeeming multiples - ouch);
-- dynamic pricing isn't going to work as well in a traditional B&M store;
-- their produce is priced comparably to Ralphs and Albertsons, but the quality isn't up to par -- tiny sweet potatoes, red delicious apples being sold for $1.49/lb. that are heavily discolored, etc. Also, when I picked up an apple last month, the one underneath it was clearly rotted, with ants crawling all around it. I left the store immediately.

Even if Amazon Fresh were the closest store to me, I'd probably still drive to Ralphs & Albertsons.
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by buckguy »

They did mailings and other promotion when they opened in DC proper but didn't draw big crowds when they opened. The store is in a busy area, but also almost across the street from Trader Joe's (which does have lines) and a few blocks from Whole Foods. The area has the right demo but apparently little interest.

Inflationary pressure? This has been so overblown by our infotainment media, along with mostly non-existent shortages. The problem is that they aren't a merchandiser, per se, and they've probably learned the wrong lessons from Whole Foods. Technology can be used to re-engineer stores and reduce some kinds of labor, but doing that has consequences that can make stores less attractive. I'm guessing they also miss that markets are often very localized and pricing varies dramatically in a metro area, along with strategies---some stores use a mix of high shelf prices with promotions, others select key categories for low prices (meat used to be common), and still others emphasize everyday low prices or in TJ's case, pare that with extensive store brands and very focused selections. Tech should help them figure out how to be a better niche player but so far it hasn't, perhaps because it would have to be supplemented by having professional shoppers and the like. The emphasis on refrigerated goods in the DC store seems particularly odd to me---it's expensive to buy and maintain and you can have significant losses when it fails. The items may be more profitable than shelf-stable goods other small format stores usually have a better balance and do good volumes with "center store" items.
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by ClownLoach »

I recently was emailed a survey from Amazon Fresh. This was without a doubt the longest customer survey I have ever encountered, and I have done focus groups and other such projects before. They wanted to know where else I shopped in the "Los Angeles Market.". I was amused to see that my "LA" options (besides everyone you would expect) included Vons, Albertsons, Pavilions and Safeway. Yes they are so inept they don't even realize that there are no "Safeway" branded stores here. What was interesting is that they asked more questions about my shopping experiences at Albertsons than any other store I said I shop regularly. Albertsons wasn't my #1 most shopped store. Literally every single category and subcategory of groceries was discussed, and I was asked what I thought about the selection, pricing, quality, assortment, private branding, promotional activities etc. Of every single one at Albertsons, then again at Amazon Fresh. Only reason I did the survey is that I will get a gift card (a Visa gift card not Amazon). So they are clearly trying to understand what they are doing wrong and what they can do to fix it.

As far as the Irvine area and Long Beach areas are concerned - I'll bet Albertsons and Ralphs are sorry they closed those nearby stores that they thought would be slaughtered by Fresh (Long Beach was the one they pretended was about the hazard pay - because they would never go on record that they were scared of Amazon). Clearly they had nothing to lose in brick and mortar retail.

All Fresh has proven is that they need to open some small grocery delivery depots in the urban areas to expedite deliveries, but they have no need to occupy retail space with a store open to the public. They probably were more profitable when they were delivery only and didn't have to pay for customer facing payroll.
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by storewanderer »

I went into Whole Foods for the first time in a while. Pizza area had some real tired looking stuff out and no staffing, and most of the prepack in the cooler directly under the service pizza slice display was just defrost and sell frozen stuff instead of the store prep pizza that used to be out there. Sign on coffee bar said it is now only open until 3 PM. Center store was very poorly stocked; there were hundreds of out of stocks throughout all center store categories. Perimeter across the board (dairy, meat, produce, etc.) was fully stocked. Meat area stunk but looked good. Produce looked better than it has recently. Pricing is very high across the board. They just cut store hours and now close at 9 PM instead of 10 PM. Odd decision right before the holidays to cut hours; this store is right by the only mall in the area and only Target in Reno, and there are typically more people out late at night during the holidays.

When I went up to pay there were no regular checkouts staffed and just the self checkout. There were 5 employees congregated talking behind the "customer service" booth, nobody watching the self checkouts. There were 2 other employees hiding behind a closed checkstand that has a rather tall wall between it and the self checkouts so I did not notice them until after I left. There was one checkstand that actually had its open light on, but the employees were of course not near that one.

I will be curious to see what Amazon does with Whole Foods. Will they spin it off? Will they convert it to Amazon Fresh? They seem like they have really messed up the store standards that previously existed and despite all the noise about pricing I find their pricing to be very high, but no longer the top quality product and service that used to exist.
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by Alpha8472 »

A new Whole Foods is about to open in Oakland, California. Shocking... It was planned to be a small Whole Foods 365 store with limited selection and low prices. The 365 chain was eliminated, and now this store will open as a full priced Whole Foods with no service departments and a limited variety of products. There is only 1 true Whole Foods in Oakland right now. Most residents of Oakland are not the kind of people who shop at Whole Foods. I am surprised that they did not try an Amazon Fresh here. Then again, the cashier-less technology would probably not work very well in this city.

I give this store 6 months tops. Assuming it is not looted and burned before it opens.
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by veteran+ »

ClownLoach wrote: November 20th, 2021, 9:27 pm I recently was emailed a survey from Amazon Fresh. This was without a doubt the longest customer survey I have ever encountered, and I have done focus groups and other such projects before. They wanted to know where else I shopped in the "Los Angeles Market.". I was amused to see that my "LA" options (besides everyone you would expect) included Vons, Albertsons, Pavilions and Safeway. Yes they are so inept they don't even realize that there are no "Safeway" branded stores here. What was interesting is that they asked more questions about my shopping experiences at Albertsons than any other store I said I shop regularly. Albertsons wasn't my #1 most shopped store. Literally every single category and subcategory of groceries was discussed, and I was asked what I thought about the selection, pricing, quality, assortment, private branding, promotional activities etc. Of every single one at Albertsons, then again at Amazon Fresh. Only reason I did the survey is that I will get a gift card (a Visa gift card not Amazon). So they are clearly trying to understand what they are doing wrong and what they can do to fix it.

As far as the Irvine area and Long Beach areas are concerned - I'll bet Albertsons and Ralphs are sorry they closed those nearby stores that they thought would be slaughtered by Fresh (Long Beach was the one they pretended was about the hazard pay - because they would never go on record that they were scared of Amazon). Clearly they had nothing to lose in brick and mortar retail.

All Fresh has proven is that they need to open some small grocery delivery depots in the urban areas to expedite deliveries, but they have no need to occupy retail space with a store open to the public. They probably were more profitable when they were delivery only and didn't have to pay for customer facing payroll.
I got the same one!!!

:-)
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by veteran+ »

storewanderer wrote: November 20th, 2021, 9:40 pm I went into Whole Foods for the first time in a while. Pizza area had some real tired looking stuff out and no staffing, and most of the prepack in the cooler directly under the service pizza slice display was just defrost and sell frozen stuff instead of the store prep pizza that used to be out there. Sign on coffee bar said it is now only open until 3 PM. Center store was very poorly stocked; there were hundreds of out of stocks throughout all center store categories. Perimeter across the board (dairy, meat, produce, etc.) was fully stocked. Meat area stunk but looked good. Produce looked better than it has recently. Pricing is very high across the board. They just cut store hours and now close at 9 PM instead of 10 PM. Odd decision right before the holidays to cut hours; this store is right by the only mall in the area and only Target in Reno, and there are typically more people out late at night during the holidays.

When I went up to pay there were no regular checkouts staffed and just the self checkout. There were 5 employees congregated talking behind the "customer service" booth, nobody watching the self checkouts. There were 2 other employees hiding behind a closed checkstand that has a rather tall wall between it and the self checkouts so I did not notice them until after I left. There was one checkstand that actually had its open light on, but the employees were of course not near that one.

I will be curious to see what Amazon does with Whole Foods. Will they spin it off? Will they convert it to Amazon Fresh? They seem like they have really messed up the store standards that previously existed and despite all the noise about pricing I find their pricing to be very high, but no longer the top quality product and service that used to exist.
I have not seen these issues in Los Angeles , yet.
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by rwsandiego »

veteran+ wrote: November 21st, 2021, 8:21 am
storewanderer wrote: November 20th, 2021, 9:40 pm I went into Whole Foods for the first time in a while. Pizza area had some real tired looking stuff out and no staffing, and most of the prepack in the cooler directly under the service pizza slice display was just defrost and sell frozen stuff instead of the store prep pizza that used to be out there. Sign on coffee bar said it is now only open until 3 PM. Center store was very poorly stocked; there were hundreds of out of stocks throughout all center store categories. Perimeter across the board (dairy, meat, produce, etc.) was fully stocked. Meat area stunk but looked good. Produce looked better than it has recently. Pricing is very high across the board. They just cut store hours and now close at 9 PM instead of 10 PM. Odd decision right before the holidays to cut hours; this store is right by the only mall in the area and only Target in Reno, and there are typically more people out late at night during the holidays.

When I went up to pay there were no regular checkouts staffed and just the self checkout. There were 5 employees congregated talking behind the "customer service" booth, nobody watching the self checkouts. There were 2 other employees hiding behind a closed checkstand that has a rather tall wall between it and the self checkouts so I did not notice them until after I left. There was one checkstand that actually had its open light on, but the employees were of course not near that one.

I will be curious to see what Amazon does with Whole Foods. Will they spin it off? Will they convert it to Amazon Fresh? They seem like they have really messed up the store standards that previously existed and despite all the noise about pricing I find their pricing to be very high, but no longer the top quality product and service that used to exist.
I have not seen these issues in Los Angeles , yet.
I haven't seen these issues in Phoenix, either.
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Re: Amazon Fresh's cashierless plan falling short

Post by ClownLoach »

rwsandiego wrote: November 21st, 2021, 5:28 pm
veteran+ wrote: November 21st, 2021, 8:21 am
storewanderer wrote: November 20th, 2021, 9:40 pm I went into Whole Foods for the first time in a while. Pizza area had some real tired looking stuff out and no staffing, and most of the prepack in the cooler directly under the service pizza slice display was just defrost and sell frozen stuff instead of the store prep pizza that used to be out there. Sign on coffee bar said it is now only open until 3 PM. Center store was very poorly stocked; there were hundreds of out of stocks throughout all center store categories. Perimeter across the board (dairy, meat, produce, etc.) was fully stocked. Meat area stunk but looked good. Produce looked better than it has recently. Pricing is very high across the board. They just cut store hours and now close at 9 PM instead of 10 PM. Odd decision right before the holidays to cut hours; this store is right by the only mall in the area and only Target in Reno, and there are typically more people out late at night during the holidays.

When I went up to pay there were no regular checkouts staffed and just the self checkout. There were 5 employees congregated talking behind the "customer service" booth, nobody watching the self checkouts. There were 2 other employees hiding behind a closed checkstand that has a rather tall wall between it and the self checkouts so I did not notice them until after I left. There was one checkstand that actually had its open light on, but the employees were of course not near that one.

I will be curious to see what Amazon does with Whole Foods. Will they spin it off? Will they convert it to Amazon Fresh? They seem like they have really messed up the store standards that previously existed and despite all the noise about pricing I find their pricing to be very high, but no longer the top quality product and service that used to exist.
I have not seen these issues in Los Angeles , yet.
I haven't seen these issues in Phoenix, either.
I was in Portland last week at the flagship store in the Pearl District. I was floored by the deterioration of this store. This was a very nice store that was very busy previously, and since the last time I was there dozens of massive high rise apartments and condos have gone up in the area. The store only had a couple of registers opened. Poor merchandising overall with nonsense endcaps that appeared to be overstock of slow movers - not as bad as what I observed recently at Fresh in SoCal, but I wouldn't stock an endcap with a completely random mix of bagged, canned, and Keurig-style coffees. Again looked like they just took the overstock from the aisle, shoved onto the endcap and printed bin labels. Produce was not fresh looking and poorly merchandised, more shoved/dumped into the wet rack than "displayed" if you get my drift... Like what you would expect a Winco or Food4Less to look like. Bakery was not staffed at all. It was dinnertime - about 5:30pm and they were tossing all of the pizza slices and closing down the deli. They had already put away all of the hot foods and only the salad bar was still out. If they have been doing these early closures of the service departments then it's no wonder the store is dead - this is the kind of area that is a fight in traffic to drive home to (if you lived here and didn't work nearby in an office building) and I feel like most of the customers would be landing around that time or even later. Nobody was behind the meat and seafood counters, just a bell for service. Seafood area did not smell good, and meat smelled like a strange combination of cleaning chemicals and old stale meat (like someone has been trying to clean but probably wasn't trained how to do it properly). Looked like they had mothballed the upstairs dining area and the cooking school.

This store's problems are entirely self inflicted. As a customer I do not see why I would shop this store anymore. This store is supposed to be the best of what Whole Foods has to offer.

I was in a few Fred Meyer stores in OR and WA as well and I was pleasantly surprised with execution. They seem to have dramatically improved all of their fresh departments especially produce. Felt much better than last time I was there (comparing to Pre COVID times)

I would say that the Fred Meyer stores overall had better looking produce, meat and deli than this "flagship" Whole Foods did - and even in small town Tillamook around 8pm all the Fred Meyer service departments were still staffed except the sandwich bar. All of these stores were BUSY and STAFFED well - Renton, WA on a Wednesday afternoon had every single cash register open and staffed and the store was slammed but holding up well. I noticed that the Fred Meyer stores were emphasizing their organics more than what I'm used to seeing with Ralphs in SoCal - clearly they see the WF struggles and are happily taking market share back.

I did visit a PCC in Bellevue that was fairly new, weird location on the bottom floor of a multi story development with a Dave and Busters and small format Target. The PCC was quite pleasant - reminded me of the high level standards and execution Whole Foods used to deliver. Took me way back. It was probably about 25K square feet, less than half the size of a WF, maybe same as the dead 365 store concept, yet it felt like it had a much wider assortment of fresh and prepared foods. Very subtle decor that didn't distract from the great foods - little signage of any kind other than aisle hangers - but had created a stunning mural with metal pieces of some kind on the front end. Maybe Amazon needs to downsize the "large format" stores to this size box then break up the chain and sell chunks to similar regionals like PCC.

The Pearl flagship Whole Foods by the way is in the "nice part" of the dense urban part of Portland and I was pleasantly surprised not to see homeless encampments and other such problems in this district. I'm sure other stores in downtown area like the former CityTarget are under attack on a regular basis but I didn't feel like this was the case here. The rest of Portland has deteriorated to a utterly shocking state. Driving down from Washington on I-5 is alarming - as soon as you go over the bridge into Oregon the sides of the freeways are tent cities. Interchange cloverleafs are something more, full scale homeless camps that even had vehicles parked in them such as beat up old vans and RVs. This is clearly government property where the tents and vehicles pose a safety hazard and should be impounded/removed. There must be 1000 stolen shopping carts of all sizes and colors just along the stretch of I-5 between the river and the downtown Bridge interchanges.
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