Amazon just announced that it’s closing all Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go stores, proving that it should stick to what it knows best: online shopping.
Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go were the behemoth’s foray into brick-and-mortar grocery stores, and they seemed doomed to fail from the start. With the world increasingly turning to online grocery shopping, it was a bizarre choice for a company with such a stranglehold in the online shopping market already. But now, there will be no more physical Amazon-branded store locations. Here’s why, and what some stores might be turning into.
‘We Haven’t Yet Created a Truly Distinctive Customer Experience’
In an Amazon blog post announcing the closures, the company said — in a whole lot of MBA and marketing jargon — that Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores just weren’t successful enough to keep operating. “While we’ve seen encouraging signals in our Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, we haven’t yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion,” it reads.
A total of 72 Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go stores nationwide will close. Most will close on Sunday, February 1st, not giving store employees much notice. Stores in California will be open for another 45 days due to state labor notification requirements. Amazon will offer affected employees roles in other departments, or will pay for severance packages, according to GeekWire.
Sentiment about the closures online is not sympathetic to the plight of one of the world’s richest man. “Good,” said one Redditor. “May you lose a lot of money, Bezos.”
“Online retailer that killed many brick & mortar companies closes its brick & mortar companies,” quipped another.
Some Locations to Turn into ‘Whole Paychecks’
It does not seem that Amazon is backing completely out of physical stores, though. In the blog post, the company said that at least some of the shuttered Amazon Fresh locations will be turned into Whole Foods, the Amazon-owned grocery stores that have earned the nickname Whole Paycheck for their ridiculously high prices. That’s not exactly going to be a boon of affordability to many of these communities. The company did not say where any new Whole Foods would be opening.
Amazon is also still dabbling with physical stores in other areas. One, coming in 2027 to a Chicago suburb, will be a giant supercenter-like store, with groceries and other Amazon products — probably like a Walmart. While we don’t love the idea of more Walmarts in the world, let’s hope it doesn’t end up like Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go with abandoned storefronts and laid off employees.
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