All Amazon Fresh, Amazon Go Stores Going Away

Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores are past their prime, according to the e-commerce behemoth.

Amazon is shutting down all of its physical Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh locations, the Wall Street Journal reported. The move will see 57 Fresh and 15 Go stores close their doors after the company admitted a failure to separate from the competition and scale up.

Both brands were considered major entries into Amazon’s push for physical retail space.

Amazon Fresh tried to provide mass-market shopping selections and embraced a technological edge with digital shopping carts. Amazon Go was geared more towards convenience and allowed customers to check out electronically and exit, a technology Amazon has licensed to other retailers.

Prior to Amazon’s shutdown decisions, struggles were evident. Around this time last year, the Amazon Go portfolio was roughly half what it was two years prior.

And prior to that, the promise of Amazon Fresh grocery stores rotted in the minds of communities waiting for them to open as properties became zombies, lacking a path towards opening or abandonment. At one point, the company paused the openings of stores across the country to revamp its design, expand its selection of items and reduce prices. It also dropped its patented “just walk out” technology in favor of “dash carts,” which consumers could use to track costs while shopping.

In recent years, the company shuttered all of its storefront bookshops, pop-ups, and toy and home-goods shops.

Never one to end an experiment without a pivot in mind, Amazon plans to put more resources into online same-day delivery and the Whole Foods Market business, which the company acquired in 2017 for $13.5 billion; conversions to Whole Foods groceries are on tap for certain brick-and-mortar stores.

Amazon also isn’t throwing in the towel on branded brick-and-mortar experiences, recently scoring approval for its biggest store ever in Orland Park, Illinois. The company will sell groceries, merchandise and prepared foods there.

— Holden Walter-Warner