Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

[mbz321]

Safeway sells Amazon gift cards and Target gift cards. You can then get 5% off many types of gift cards including gas station cards. The Amazon Prime card has a deal if you sign up for 10% off gas station purchases for a limited time.

Yes, I'm aware about the gift cards(although I'm on the east coast so Acme here), I just happened to be driving past Amazon and figured I'd pop in. Here on Black Friday, ShopRite has a deal when you buy $100 in any gift cards (besides store branded ones, but they don't carry Amazon or Target), you get $20 off your next grocery order. Acme is running something similar, but $25 off your next order when you buy $150 in a curated list of gift card brands.)

[pseudo3d]

I've probably said this before but the fact that Amazon Fresh's stores are ALL in Albertsons overlap areas (except for Europe) makes me think that they'd be a good suitor for Albertsons if/when the Kroger merger fails. It wouldn't even need to have "Amazon buy Albertsons", they'd just need to buy the private equity share. Pulled off correctly, Cerberus gets its cash, Amazon gets to save face while still being a big part of grocery (and keeps Whole Foods), and Albertsons gets nearly 40 new stores spread across half a dozen divisions.

Won't happen... too many unions at Albertsons.

And really based on how Whole Foods has gotten under Amazon I hope it does not happen.

Oh, maybe I read this wrong. You are implying Albertsons should buy Amazon Fresh? I think these are useless for Albertsons- they are the wrong size stores in the wrong locations with the wrong layout, wrong department sizes, just wrong wrong wrong. There are a few in former grocery stores that may work... but most of these are not former grocery stores. They are former Bed Bath and Beyonds, former Toys R Us, etc.

A little of both actually...if Amazon buys PART of Albertsons, the part Cerberus and friends care about, they could keep Albertsons independent (they won't be tied into Amazon for unions or whatever) and as part of this, some of the Amazon Fresh stores could be converted into Albertsons brands. The problem is some of the locations are real losers that would probably be hard to make work, so they won't all survive long-term. But properly pulled off it would give a win to three companies: Cerberus, as it gets to sell the Albertsons interest to a new suitor; Amazon, as it would expand the company without risking the bad press from pulling the plug on Amazon Fresh; and Albertsons, as it would remain independent and be supplied by a partial owner who would be hopefully more generous than private equity.

[norcalriteaidclerk]

Now it would interesting to see if the Sacramento sites will even opened as planned,open as whole foods,or get completely mothballed.Would rather see Citrus Heights sunrise village (for more reasons than one) become whole foods than get mothballed entirely.Sacramento Country Club and Roseville/Rocklin sites appear to be too close to existing whole foods locations.Don't know which other local sites if any were at least under consideration.

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Country Club and Roseville don't strike me as good Whole Foods sites. Country Club is the wrong neighborhood for Whole Foods. Roseville site has poor visibility and is near the existing Whole Foods. Sunrise Village may actually make some sense for a more center store focused Whole Foods (probably would have been a great match for the old 365 concept) that doesn't have much perimeter. Busy intersection, bordering a lot of areas, where is the nearest Sprouts? Just the one near Sunrise (which I don't find to be too busy)? I know Trader Joe's is nearby.

How far along are they on finishing Sunrise Village? I thought Roseville had refrigeration installed some time ago but still no sign of when it will open. Have not been by Country Club.

At the current construction pace Sunrise Village isn't expected to be ready before spring as it is.Another location planned in the elk Grove area is already reported to be hiring.

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[pseudo3d]

Now it would interesting to see if the Sacramento sites will even opened as planned,open as whole foods,or get completely mothballed.Would rather see Citrus Heights sunrise village (for more reasons than one) become whole foods than get mothballed entirely.Sacramento Country Club and Roseville/Rocklin sites appear to be too close to existing whole foods locations.Don't know which other local sites if any were at least under consideration.

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Country Club and Roseville don't strike me as good Whole Foods sites. Country Club is the wrong neighborhood for Whole Foods. Roseville site has poor visibility and is near the existing Whole Foods. Sunrise Village may actually make some sense for a more center store focused Whole Foods (probably would have been a great match for the old 365 concept) that doesn't have much perimeter. Busy intersection, bordering a lot of areas, where is the nearest Sprouts? Just the one near Sunrise (which I don't find to be too busy)? I know Trader Joe's is nearby.

How far along are they on finishing Sunrise Village? I thought Roseville had refrigeration installed some time ago but still no sign of when it will open. Have not been by Country Club.

At the current construction pace Sunrise Village isn't expected to be ready before spring as it is.Another location planned in the elk Grove area is already reported to be hiring.

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Supermarket News reports that Amazon hasn't opened a new store since September and that they have many built-out "zombie stores" in the Northeast. I still think that they can escape with some skin in the game if they invest in Albertsons if/when the Kroger merger falls apart, close the bad, weird Amazon Fresh locations, keep Whole Foods separate, and start offloading the remaining Fresh stores to Albertsons. As far as I know, all of the Amazon Fresh markets are in Albertsons markets as well (West Coast, Illinois, Northeast, etc.).

[storewanderer]

Yet there is this
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/ ... 745319007/

I've read revenues from Amazon Web Services is starting to decline or grow less quickly or something. Less slush money from that operation and these money losing stores are probably high up on the list to go.

Also I can't help but notice on Amazon.com they've increased prices drastically on various items and are no longer competitive with Target or Wal Mart or other websites (even Walgreens has many prices online lower) on consumables/drugstore/supplement type items.

[pseudo3d]

Yet there is this
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/ ... 745319007/

I've read revenues from Amazon Web Services is starting to decline or grow less quickly or something. Less slush money from that operation and these money losing stores are probably high up on the list to go.

Also I can't help but notice on Amazon.com they've increased prices drastically on various items and are no longer competitive with Target or Wal Mart or other websites (even Walgreens has many prices online lower) on consumables/drugstore/supplement type items.

Amazon could probably afford to keep Amazon Fresh up for a long time, and there are ways to get rid of the stores without causing stock issues. Whether or not Amazon Fresh goes away next year, I believe that Amazon is less than five years from a major restructuring or spin-off, like separating AWS from their retail operations.

[storewanderer]

Amazon could probably afford to keep Amazon Fresh up for a long time, and there are ways to get rid of the stores without causing stock issues. Whether or not Amazon Fresh goes away next year, I believe that Amazon is less than five years from a major restructuring or spin-off, like separating AWS from their retail operations.

I think "Amazon Fresh" stays as a program indefinitely, the question mark is these physical Amazon Fresh Stores.

If they separate AWS from retail, the retail side is going to have to get a lot more profitable. Given what the retail side Amazon.com has done with pricing lately, they may be well on their way to being more profitable in the future.

That also opens up another question; what happens to Whole Foods? I'd sure like to see that spun out of Amazon. Amazon has done zero favors to Whole Foods.

[pseudo3d]

Amazon could probably afford to keep Amazon Fresh up for a long time, and there are ways to get rid of the stores without causing stock issues. Whether or not Amazon Fresh goes away next year, I believe that Amazon is less than five years from a major restructuring or spin-off, like separating AWS from their retail operations.

I think "Amazon Fresh" stays as a program indefinitely, the question mark is these physical Amazon Fresh Stores.

If they separate AWS from retail, the retail side is going to have to get a lot more profitable. Given what the retail side Amazon.com has done with pricing lately, they may be well on their way to being more profitable in the future.

That also opens up another question; what happens to Whole Foods? I'd sure like to see that spun out of Amazon. Amazon has done zero favors to Whole Foods.

As far as I know, Whole Foods is separate from Amazon Fresh, which would help them keep it in the case of any shakeups regarding Amazon Fresh. They really just need to put the right people in charge and stop trying to integrate to Amazon as hard as they have.

[ClownLoach]

Amazon could probably afford to keep Amazon Fresh up for a long time, and there are ways to get rid of the stores without causing stock issues. Whether or not Amazon Fresh goes away next year, I believe that Amazon is less than five years from a major restructuring or spin-off, like separating AWS from their retail operations.

I think "Amazon Fresh" stays as a program indefinitely, the question mark is these physical Amazon Fresh Stores.

If they separate AWS from retail, the retail side is going to have to get a lot more profitable. Given what the retail side Amazon.com has done with pricing lately, they may be well on their way to being more profitable in the future.

That also opens up another question; what happens to Whole Foods? I'd sure like to see that spun out of Amazon. Amazon has done zero favors to Whole Foods.

As far as I know, Whole Foods is separate from Amazon Fresh, which would help them keep it in the case of any shakeups regarding Amazon Fresh. They really just need to put the right people in charge and stop trying to integrate to Amazon as hard as they have.

This is another oddity. Amazon spent a fortune replacing all the Whole Foods store systems as they had a hodgepodge of random cash registers across their chain. The store that opened across the street from me had every single system from network to registers to scales yanked out and replaced 45 days after the store opened. Yet they are using completely different and incompatible systems at the Fresh stores. The Fresh stores appear to use a funky proprietary system that appears to be a web app on Amazon.com while Whole Foods uses a new NCR system. I cannot see any reason why they didn't use the same systems, especially when "just walk out" is a completely separate cloud based system.

[storewanderer]

This is another oddity. Amazon spent a fortune replacing all the Whole Foods store systems as they had a hodgepodge of random cash registers across their chain. The store that opened across the street from me had every single system from network to registers to scales yanked out and replaced 45 days after the store opened. Yet they are using completely different and incompatible systems at the Fresh stores. The Fresh stores appear to use a funky proprietary system that appears to be a web app on Amazon.com while Whole Foods uses a new NCR system. I cannot see any reason why they didn't use the same systems, especially when "just walk out" is a completely separate cloud based system.

Whole Foods had standardized to IBM/Toshiba Touchscreen across their chain. It is not a great system, even worse then than it is now, and they had a lot of problems with it. The same system Albertsons is using now (also Kroger, Winn Dixie, and various others). Also the same touchscreen interface is being used at Bed Bath and Beyond, Michaels, and some other non-grocery retailers. The problem was the touchscreen interface was very inefficient in the grocery environment, system interfaced slowly, but the bigger problem was IBM/Toshiba was very behind on EMV Chip Card acceptance and had no working solution for Contactless payments. There was also an issue in wanting to get Amazon Loyalty integrated into Whole Foods and they didn't seem to know how to make that happen with the IBM/Toshiba system either without some major changes and given the system already had a lot of problems I think they were scared the loyalty integration would just not work out.

The change in point of sale systems off of IBM/Toshiba was a project Whole Foods was involved in before the Amazon purchase.

Whole Foods always wanted to work with NCR. The legacy Whole Foods operation in TX used NCR for years as did NorCal. After they bought Wild Oats, who was using IBM standard keyboard, in addition to the east coast Whole Foods also using that IBM standard keyboard system, they for whatever reason decided to standardize with IBM but go with the (at the time) brand new touchscreen IBM supermarket solution. What was funny was at the time each region used various registers so in some cases they had taken some Wild Oats that were IBM, put NCR into them, then went back to IBM again within a matter of months.

That IBM/Toshiba System lost quite a few chains in that era due to being so behind on EMV Card Acceptance and Contactless payments. They lost Food Lion, Grocery Outlet, and a handfull of regional chains around the same time they lost Whole Foods. However they did gain some chains as Ahold had previously used some weird system for Stop N Shop and Giant-MD and moved them over to the IBM/Toshiba solution that Giant-PA used.