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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
(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.