Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by ClownLoach »

veteran+ wrote: January 17th, 2023, 12:31 pm Wow, did not know Good Foods was so awful.
I think everything went south once they bought New Seasons. Private equity had severely damaged them before dumping them on E-mart/Good Food. They were broken from an ill-fated expansion into Northern California and they were slashing payroll left and right because they were losing money. That doesn't go well in the markets they serve where, let's just say there is an attitude amongst the employees that profits are evil (of course a business that loses money closes, but don't confuse them with facts). It sounds like the company put on a massive union-busting campaign with threatening mailers and even PA announcements in the stores.

They also make strange investments that don't exactly make sense. The Lazy Acres in Long Beach took several years to catch on (it was the first Bristol Farms to be converted to the format) and finally got momentum going in the last couple of years. It was heavily remodeled to become Lazy Acres although they preserved some of the beautiful custom murals from Bristol - it took almost a year of construction to convert to Lazy. For some bizarre reason they are completely remodeling the store after just a few years and it has been under even more heavy construction for almost 9 months. They are operating under horrible conditions with a few construction lights dangling from the rafters and minimal perimeter operation. All the remaining beautiful elements of Bristol Farms were smashed to bits and thrown in the dumpster. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the store although it could have used an external remodel to add a patio for dining. Basically after chasing away all the customers during the Bristol conversion at a time where nobody had ever heard of Lazy Acres, then finally gaining a foothold in the market, they've run out all the customers again with their horrible drawn out remodel project. The only difference is unlike the first conversion project this time they are competing with a new, doubled size relocated WFM to the south, the 365 that seems to be highly successful to the north, a rare newly expanded target, and a Gelsons that opened shortly after the conversion. The newer prototype Lazy Acres all built from scratch in San Diego are much lower end than the Long Beach store was, so if they're remodeling to match then I don't see any way that the customers who do finally return after almost another year of disruption will find it to be anything less than a massive downgrade.

And then you have the Irvine Bristol "Newfound" fiasco where they've really built the "right" store in the most "wrong" location possible at the highest possible rent. Supposedly some of the Metropolitan Market locations around downtown Seattle are having the same severe theft and homeless problems as QFC.

I really wonder how much longer E-mart will tolerate all these problems with Good Food before they do something drastic and either cash out or shut it down to cut their losses. They are certainly in no position to expand, and the damage they did with New Seasons union busting activity would ignite a massive nationwide union drive in retaliation at WFM if they did somehow take over.
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by ClownLoach »

Apparently Amazon is now "starting conversations" today with those being let go, instead of "completing" the conversations by today. Hence the lack of news aside from the one already announced Ballard closing.
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by pseudo3d »

Looks like WFM wants to triple their openings that they usually do. An odd choice--I'm betting that there might be a spinoff from Amazon coming and that WFM is planning to pick up a few Amazon Fresh stores when they inevitably announce closings...tomorrow, probably.
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by storewanderer »

pseudo3d wrote: January 18th, 2023, 3:06 pm Looks like WFM wants to triple their openings that they usually do. An odd choice--I'm betting that there might be a spinoff from Amazon coming and that WFM is planning to pick up a few Amazon Fresh stores when they inevitably announce closings...tomorrow, probably.
I read that article, is that article a joke or something?

Total fantasy there.

Also accepting Zappos returns in store without the box or anything is something they are talking about. Whole Foods is so lost they are talking up accepting used shoe returns in the store.
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by ClownLoach »

I'm wondering if they let all the Fresh upper management go and transferred the stores to WFM? That would accomplish a ton of layoffs and save money without spending tens of millions on closings and lease terminations. It made no sense to run two identical, large teams within the organization. Austin WFM HQ could do a better job running Fresh even now. The stores already are running so little payroll that a private equity CEO observing would smile like The Grinch. If so then the zombie stores could be finished as Whole Foods. But they really need to fix the broken stores before they add more (fix 365 and the 70-80K size stores that have downscaled operations).
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by ClownLoach »

storewanderer wrote: January 18th, 2023, 11:37 pm
pseudo3d wrote: January 18th, 2023, 3:06 pm Looks like WFM wants to triple their openings that they usually do. An odd choice--I'm betting that there might be a spinoff from Amazon coming and that WFM is planning to pick up a few Amazon Fresh stores when they inevitably announce closings...tomorrow, probably.
I read that article, is that article a joke or something?

Total fantasy there.

Also accepting Zappos returns in store without the box or anything is something they are talking about. Whole Foods is so lost they are talking up accepting used shoe returns in the store.
WFM isn't lost, they're just being force fed bad Amazon ideas like a goose at a foie gras farm. WFM management has been tightly muzzled for years now. I was shocked to see that they were allowed to talk to the media at all.
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by ClownLoach »

My Fresh contacts have been laid off. But they have no idea what's going to happen.
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by storewanderer »

I'd ask how the Fresh Stores look right about now, but since they were so mixed in terms of execution in the first place, that may not be a useful question to ask.

Meanwhile I was looking to obtain a home improvement item and it is out of stock at Home Depot and Lowes. Amazon has it (shipped and sold by Amazon) but their price is 40% higher than Home Depot or Lowes. I wonder if their system is now tracking out of stocks at competitors and marking the prices up when that is the case. Often the Amazon pricing matches these competitors. I haven't ordered anything from Amazon in months. Though I recently had an item I ordered on eBay that was delivered by the Amazon Delivery Van. I thought that was odd. At first I thought I had come across an eBay seller who had a way to find a better deal on Amazon and bought the item on Amazon and shipped it to me. But I am not so sure of this. Upon looking at the package, the item was packed just like an Amazon shipment (that paper bag envelope thing) but none of the packaging made any reference to Amazon.
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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by norcalriteaidclerk »

The Sunrise Village and elk Grove locations can easily be repurposed for whole paycheck whole foods as they are both similarly sized as the Arden Plaza location.In any case, I would rather see possibly-mothballed Sunrise Village get snapped up by the likes of 99 Ranch or h-mart(they'll certainly give my RAD as significant business bump)than by another *cough*grocery outlet*cough*,not to mention that Dollar tree is already a side street or two away.

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Re: Amazon Halts All New Amazon Fresh Just Walk Out Stores

Post by ClownLoach »

So I have heard nothing. The public obviously has not heard anything either. Based on the layoffs of my contacts there doesn't seem to be anyone left from Fresh upper management, so I'm assuming that they decided to give the stores one last shot? Maybe under WFM leadership now? The cost of the lease terminations would be massive with so many sites already signed; I think Amazon could afford a few more months or even a couple of years of losses to give the stores another shot under different leadership. The cost of a lease termination this early on is so high that it probably won't cost much more to keep them open another year or so than if they closed today. And the majority of the "zombie" stores can probably open as WFM to prevent more losses while they retool the broken Fresh brand.

I also found out that the hires from Tesco for Amazon Fresh were not only running the UK stores but actually were in charge in the US. This explains all the parallels with Fresh and Easy... It's the same people at the top, just recycled.

Very disappointing because a lot of really good people were recruited to Fresh from other companies only to be laid off. Almost as if they wanted to clear the corporate offices of competitors, especially Target, to hurt them even though they were hiring way too many leaders for this small group of new, unproven stores.
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