new amazon grocery stores may be unveiled this year

As many as two dozen new Amazon food stores could be built and opened later this year, according to industry sources.

Plans are underway for the construction of what will be the first Amazon grocery store in the country in Woodland Hills, California.

That store is being built inside a former Toys “R” Us outlet measuring 40,000 square feet, with a completion date scheduled for later this spring.

The new grocery stores will be built along the business model of a traditional grocery store, unlike the company’s earlier Amazon Go convenience outlets, which have seen customers using a smartphone app to purchase products, avoiding checkout lines altogether.

The outlets are all expected to measure around 20,000 to 40,000 square feet, but whether they will be built in existing spaces, as is the case with the Woodland Hills store, or in entirely new buildings, remains to be announced.

How successful the Amazon stores will be remains to be seen, The financial website Motley Fool has wondered how interested suppliers will be in signing on with a new chain that has only a limited number of locations.

But the Motley Fool also notes that “Amazon has something of a penchant for building efficient, large-scale operations that disrupt existing relationships.”

The Amazon grocery stores are not to be confused with the online giant’s nearly $14 billion purchase of the Whole Foods grocery chain.

The exact locations of the new Amazon grocery stores have not been disclosed, but it is thought that early outlets will go up in Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.
​
Embracing bricks and mortar commerce, Amazon currently has just over two dozen Amazon Go locations either up and running or being built, along with 11 Amazon Books stores, and nearly five hundred Whole Foods locations.

​By Garry Boulard

---