Amazon Will Consider Opening Up to 3,000 Cashierless Stores by 2021
Amazon.com Inc. is considering a plan to open as many as 3,000 new AmazonGo cashierless stores in the next few years, according to people familiar with matter, an aggressive and costly expansion that would threaten convenience chains like 7-Eleven Inc., quick-service sandwich shops like Subway and Panera Bread, and mom-and-pop pizzerias and taco trucks.
Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos sees eliminating meal-time logjams in busy cities as the best way for Amazon to reinvent the brick-and-mortar shopping experience, where most spending still occurs. But he's still experimenting with the best format: a convenience store that sells fresh prepared foods as well as a limited grocery selection similar to 7-Eleven franchises, or a place to simply pick up a quick bite to eat for people in a rush, similar to the U.K.-based chain Pret a Manger, one of the people said.
An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment. The company unveiled its first cashierless store near its headquarters in Seattle in 2016 and has since announced two additional sites in Seattle and one in Chicago. Two of the new stores offer only a limited selection of salads, sandwiches and snacks, showing that Amazon is experimenting with the concept simply as a meal-on-the-run option. Two other stores, including the original AmazonGo, also have a small selection of groceries, making it more akin to a convenience store.
Can Bezos make the leap from $160 billion to $1 trillion?
See also: Amazon Thinks Big, and That Doesn't Come Cheap
Previously: Amazon Go: It's Like Shoplifting
"Amazon Go" Store Opens in Seattle
Amazon Plans to Open as Many as Six More Cashierless Amazon Go Stores This Year
Related Stories
Amazon is testing a brick-and-mortar concept store that would allow shoppers to pick items off the shelf and leave without waiting in a line:
Amazon.com Inc said on Monday it has opened a brick-and-mortar grocery store in Seattle without lines or checkout counters, kicking off new competition with supermarket chains.
Amazon Go, the online shopping giant's new 1,800-square-foot (167-square-meter) store, uses sensors to detect what shoppers have picked off the shelf and bills it to their Amazon account if they do not put it back.
The store marks Amazon's latest push into groceries, one of the biggest retail categories it has yet to master. The company currently delivers produce and groceries to homes through its AmazonFresh service.
"It's a great recognition that their e-commerce model doesn't work for every product," said analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research, noting that physical stores would complement AmazonFresh. "If there were hundreds of these stores around the country, it would be a huge threat" to supermarket chains, he said.
Also at CNBC, Bloomberg, and The Verge:
It'll feel like shoplifting, except you're actually being watched by more cameras than you can imagine.
Amazon Go is a go:
The first clue that there's something unusual about Amazon's store of the future hits you right at the front door. It feels as if you are entering a subway station. A row of gates guard the entrance to the store, known as Amazon Go, allowing in only people with the store's smartphone app.
Inside is an 1,800-square foot mini-market packed with shelves of food that you can find in a lot of other convenience stores — soda, potato chips, ketchup. It also has some food usually found at Whole Foods, the supermarket chain that Amazon owns.
But the technology that is also inside, mostly tucked away out of sight, enables a shopping experience like no other. There are no cashiers or registers anywhere. Shoppers leave the store through those same gates, without pausing to pull out a credit card. Their Amazon account automatically gets charged for what they take out the door.
[...] There were a little over 3.5 million cashiers in the United States in 2016 — and some of their jobs may be in jeopardy if the technology behind Amazon Go eventually spreads. For now, Amazon says its technology simply changes the role of employees — the same way it describes the impact of automation on its warehouse workers.
Also at TechCrunch.
Previously: Amazon Go: It's Like Shoplifting
Amazon's much-heralded convenience store of the future, Amazon Go, may seem like a crazy experiment. But the company plans to open as many as six more of these storefronts this year, multiple people familiar with the company's plans have told Recode.
Some of the new high-tech stores are likely to open in Amazon's hometown of Seattle, where the first location is based, as well as Los Angeles, these people said. It's not clear if Amazon will open up Go stores in any other cities this year.
In Los Angeles, Amazon has held serious talks with billionaire developer Rick Caruso about bringing a Go store to The Grove, his 600,000-square-foot outdoor shopping Mecca, two of these people said.
And in Seattle, Amazon had identified at least three locations for additional Go stores as of last year, according to one source.
[...] News of the planned expansion of the Amazon Go concept is sure to set off fresh concerns about the great societal challenges that come with the type of automation that Amazon is inventing. Since the Amazon Go model does not involve customers checking out, there are no cashiers working in the stores.
Source: ReCode
Also Amazon reportedly plans to open more of its futuristic, cashierless stores this year
Robot Janitors Are Coming to Mop Floors at a Walmart Near You
The world's largest retailer is rolling out 360 autonomous floor-scrubbing robots in some of its stores in the U.S. by the end of the[sic] January, it said in a joint statement with Brain Corp., which makes the machines. The autonomous janitors can clean floors on their own even when customers are around, according to the San Diego-based startup.
Walmart has already been experimenting with automating the scanning of shelves for out-of-stock items and hauling products from storage for online orders. Advances in computer vision are also making it possible to use retail floor data to better understand consumer behavior, improve inventory tracking and even do away with checkout counters, as Amazon.com Inc. is trying to do with its cashierless stores. Brain's robots are equipped with an array of sensors that let them to[sic] gather and upload data.
"We can take anything that has wheels and turn it into a fully autonomous robot, provided that it can go slow and stopping is never a safety concern," said Brain Chief Executive Office Eugene Izhikevich. "And it's more than just navigation. It is to robots what Android operating system is to smartphones."
Amazon wants to sell booze at one of its Chicago retail stores
Amazon.com Inc. wants to sell alcohol at its planned new Amazon Go retail store in the Illinois Center. Seattle-based Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) applied for a liquor license from the city of Chicago this month, with "Amazon Retail LLC" applying for package goods liquor license at 111 E. Wacker Drive, floor 1, according to the city.
Amazon announced its fourth Chicago-area Amazon Go retail store earlier this month, planned for Illinois Center, with an opening set for early 2019. None of the current Chicago Amazon Go stores currently sell alcohol.
Previously: Walmart to Deploy Shelf-Scanning Robots at 50 Stores
Amazon Plans to Open as Many as Six More Cashierless Amazon Go Stores This Year
Amazon Considering Opening Up to 3,000 New Cashierless "Amazon Go" Stores
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @06:13PM (5 children)
Employ cashieers but put them in cages. [cbsnews.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Thursday September 20 2018, @06:15PM (4 children)
https://www.tssbulletproof.com/industries/convenience-stores-gas-stations/ [tssbulletproof.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @06:21PM (3 children)
Stop putting criminals in cages, everybody has to live in cages. Ding Ding: Socialist achievement "Equality" unlocked, socialist achievement "Revoking Personal Freedom" unlocked.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @06:30PM (2 children)
I say we free everyone and just stick you in a cage. Gotta contain the stupid, get patient zero into a quarantine cage stat!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday September 20 2018, @07:05PM
Patient zero of disease "stupid" died millennia ago ...
Human stupidity is a bit like homosexuality : while it could partially be transmitted or hereditary, it can just pop up anywhere, anytime, without traceability. You can't stop either with cages, though only the former will infect you if you actually try caging it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @08:39PM
No you! [city-journal.org]
(Score: 5, Touché) by bob_super on Thursday September 20 2018, @06:28PM
I'm pretty sure "cashierless stores" have been all over the place for a while, though they typically don't do biometric payment and customer profiling.
You may know them as "vending machines"
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday September 20 2018, @06:57PM
I would never spend money there. Anything spent just furthers the demise of local competition, and further decreases the local wages well below what a living wage is.
Anybody who spends money at Wallmart & Amazon deserve the dystopic future that awaits us. Bezos may care about eliminating "log-jams" for lunch, but he sure as shit doesn't care about his employees.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Thursday September 20 2018, @07:01PM (8 children)
Yeah, this probably works in Seattle where most people are college educated knowledge workers with enough to lose from being busted for shoplifting that the shrink rate will merely be horrific. Walmart here in a 19% poverty rate flyover spot with enough vibrant diversity to throw all those assumptions in a cocked hat tried it recently. They canceled the experiment after less than two months, right after the first quarterly inventory wa taken. As in ripped it all out root and branch and erased every hint that they had ever tried. I actually kinda liked using it to be honest, but you could watch people putting stuff in their buggy and not scanning it, or scanning some, etc. It was all utterly obvious what the result would be to anyone with a brain.
I'm in a fairly safe, if downscale, rural area and it failed that hard. Now imagine what would happen to a unmanned store in a truly "vibrant" area. Imagine one in San Fran with the homeless, who would see it as "free stuff."
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday September 20 2018, @07:10PM
They don't see it as free. They just dare Amazon to deliver them the bill at home.
Honestly, around here, I do trust the homeless guys (and girl) long before I trust some people who have homes.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday September 20 2018, @07:15PM (5 children)
It seems to me that the best way to make it work is to make damn sure that the people who get in have an Amazon account, right at the door. This is done by detecting the Amazon Go smartphone app. If someone tries to sneak in along with an account holder, there should be an immediate alert.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Go [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amazon_Go_-_Seattle_(20180804111407).jpg [wikipedia.org]
The stores are currently larger than normal convenience stores and do have employees:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/6/14527438/amazon-go-grocery-store-six-human-employees-automation [theverge.com]
The manager type employee would probably be responsible for security.
So at present, the Amazon Go concept does not work the way you think it does. Could it get swarmed by looters? Sure, but that has happened to normal convenience stores. Could Amazon try to rework the concept for the next thousand stores in order to use less employees? Maybe, and that could be where the trouble sets in.
But it's Bezos's bucks and I don't think anyone here would shed a tear if this fails.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @08:38PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday September 20 2018, @09:03PM
All part of the plan: Just tell the mayor about constant stealing and terrible resultant publicity for the town, given such a high-profile store, and they will park a police cruiser nearby. You just saved the cost and aggravation of having to pay for your own security, and can pocket more cash.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @09:01PM (1 child)
So if my kid tries to sneak in with me an alert will go off?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 20 2018, @09:10PM
Here's what Wikipedia says:
Tell Bezos all about your kids, and everything will be OK.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Thursday September 20 2018, @11:48PM
Yea, that would go something like this:
ED-209: We have detected you do not have a smartphone or the Amazon Go app. Leave the premises at once. You have five seconds to comply.
Peon: But I don't own a smart phone! I came here to buy one! I'll be a good little consumertard and buy one!
ED-209: Four... three... two... one... I am now authorized to use physical force!
[ED-209 opens fire and shreds the peon in to chunks of brilliant red gibbage]
ED-209: And don't forget to download our FREE news app/malware. Everyone must one a smartphone OR ELSE!
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday September 21 2018, @05:21AM
You would have "flash mobs" of "urban youths" pillaging and looting the entire store. They organize themselves through Facebook, but Facebook ignore the law-abiding public's tipoffs of imminent plunder and destruction because Facebook are too busy policing wrongthink and protecting America's elections from the evil Russians.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 20 2018, @08:13PM
Looked on the Amazon homepage, and they are peddling the Alexa-enabled microwave for $60.
They'll do anything it takes to infiltrate and kill.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @09:00PM
This idea of a employee-less store is an interesting thought experiment. What needs to be in place to have this work?
If there was a dysfunctional justice system, police system, and a Somalia-like cut-throat "take whatever you can by any means necessary" society, this fundamentally wouldn't work. Just putting this in "the bad part of town" would see mass theft and inventory loss.
One could get into political discussions on a "violently-imposed monopoly" or what have you, but regardless, it is an interesting and thought-provoking experiment.