Amazon’s shopping cart now includes new grocery store leases in LA area

Amazon continues to gobble up the e-commerce market but is also investing more into brick-and-mortar grocery stores, starting in Los Angeles.

The Everything Store has inked over a dozen leases for grocery stores in L.A. locations, some opening by the end of 2019, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The company is also eyeing Chicago and Philadelphia as early locations. Other places include the New York City area, New Jersey and Connecticut, the Journal reported.

Most of the stores are planned outside urban centers and are targeted toward middle-income suburban consumers, according to the report. In L.A., stores are planned in the affluent Woodland Hills area, Studio City, and Irvine in Orange County.

Amazon announced the grocery store venture in March. The stores are reportedly planned to be around 35,000 square feet, smaller than the typical 60,000-square-foot footprint of most chain grocery stores.

Amazon bought upscale grocer Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017, but the new grocery stores are not Whole Foods-branded. The stores will sell items that Whole Foods doesn’t, including junk food and artificially flavored soda, according to the Journal.

Amazon has been experimenting with brick-and-mortar stores for several years, and not always with success. A few days after announcing its grocery store venture, Amazon announced it was pulling the plug on several dozen retail pop-up shops it started opening in 2014.

Amazon currently operates 16 Amazon Go stores nationwide, where customers can buy ready-to-eat food without a traditional checkout. It also operates 18 Amazon Books stores. [WSJ] — Dennis Lynch