Amazon Fresh Grocery Store Opens in Los Angeles as the Company Builds Offline Presence

Amazon plans to open stores in seven locations across California and Chicago.

By Reuters | Updated: 27 August 2020 16:43 IST

Amazon Fresh Grocery Store Opens in Los Angeles as the Company Builds Offline Presence

Amazon has experimented with physical stores in recent years to capture more consumer spending

Highlights

The Los Angeles store will be the first with the Amazon Dash Cart
Amazon has more than 20 cashier-less shops with grab-and-go food
It has over 500 stores in Whole Foods Market chain it acquired in 2017

Amazon on Thursday said it is opening a supermarket in Los Angeles with shopping carts that let customers skip checkout lines, as the e-commerce company builds out its offline presence.

The market, in the Woodland Hills neighborhood, is called the Amazon Fresh grocery store. It is the first location to let customers in, by invitation only, out of seven that Amazon has confirmed for Southern California and greater Chicago. The Woodland Hills site will open to the wider public in coming weeks, Amazon said.

The world's largest online retailer has experimented with physical stores in recent years to capture more consumer spending, particularly in groceries. It has more than 20 cashier-less shops with grab-and-go food for office workers and over 500 stores in the Whole Foods Market chain it acquired in 2017.

Samsung Wins Patent for a Tri-Fold Smartphone With Specialised Barrier Layer for Improved Durability

Amazon's latest concept faces stiff competition from far larger incumbents Kroger and Albertsons Companies.

It is roughly the size of a Whole Foods store at 35,000 square feet (3,252 square meters) but serves a different need, not focused on natural and organic items, said Amazon Vice President Jeff Helbling.

"We feature a lot of national brands," he said in an interview. Prices are "lower than the other options that the people have in the Woodland Hills area."

The store will be the first with the "Amazon Dash Cart". This lets shoppers filling up to two grocery bags forgo the store's cashiers via technology systems that discern what they put in the cart and bill a credit card on file once customers leave through a designated lane.

The shop also has a counter for picking up and returning web orders, and stations for questioning Amazon's voice-controlled assistant Alexa about the store.

Amazon last month posted its biggest quarterly profit ever due to online sales during the coronavirus pandemic, but a 13 percent drop in physical store revenue.

© Thomson Reuters 2020

Which are the best truly wireless earphones under Rs. 10,000? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.