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Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

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Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#251

Post by bogomipz »

kube-system wrote: post #184
bogomipz wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That hasn't been true in a very long time. A walk through any major airport shows otherwise. The Best Buy Express vending machine is 10 years old at this point and that is just one of many brands now that have similar offerings. See: https://blog.bestbuy.ca/tv-audio/headphones-tv-audio/best-bu... and https://thepointsguy.com/news/things-sold-airport-vending-ma...

Those are all uniform packages that meet strict requirements. Grocery stores, including Amazon cashierless stores, sell things like produce. Picking an apple, banana, or bunch of grapes off a shelf is more difficult for a machine. The items are not uniform in size or shape. For a lot of produce, no mechanized handling system exists for quantities smaller than a bushel.

If you look at the photo at the top of the first link you can very clearly see that almost every single row has different size package footprints, not only from row but even between packages in the same row. There is no uniformity present. Further from the second link, there is no uniformity from machine to machine which is fundamentally no different the variation and shelf configuration from from shelf to shelf or aisle to aisle in a traditional brick and mortar retail store.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#252

Post by jedberg »

CydeWeys wrote: post #183
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #92

I used to visit one of the NYC the Go stores daily until covid happened. It was cute and surgically clean, worked wonderfully, and their inventory management was much better then CVS and Duane Reade which often sell out of things and have empty shelves for days. But nobody ever went there - no matter what time of the day I went, there would be one person doing inventory and stocking, two people standing by to help pe…

Isn't the whole point of Amazon generally, and these stores specifically in not having staff, that it's supposed to be cheaper? I think you've pinpointed the reason it failed, but I can't imagine why they thought it was going to succeed at those prices.

> Isn't the whole point of Amazon generally, and these stores specifically in not having staff, that it's supposed to be cheaper?

I'm pretty sure the goal is to have a higher profit margin than competitors by leveraging technology, not lower prices.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#253

Post by mynameisvlad »

crote wrote: post #231
mynameisvlad wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but Amazon Go is, as the comment you replied to states, a store which literally is built to require an app to use . This argument is thrown out the window when you shop at a store which explicitly and from its inception has required this. As the commenter stated, > So then why attempt to go to a store that’s entirely based on using the app?

I think a big problem is that it shouldn't require an app to use. There are plenty of cashierless stores which work just like any other store. They aren't exactly doing anything groundbreaking when it comes to that. They could also just put a regular payment terminal at the exit - the whole magic camera stuff would work just fine with it. The end result is that they created an artificially cumbersome store concept, w…

> I think a big problem is that it shouldn't require an app to use.

That’s not the issue that’s being discussed though. It’s a fair criticism, but that’s still irrelevant to the topic of Amazon Go stores requiring them and that you should therefore expect to need one if you want to enter a store.

> No wonder it isn't popular.

I wouldn’t deduce popularity from the closure of the stores. In Seattle at least, the stores had already been “temporarily” closed for a while and are in a fairly high-crime area of the city. [0] At the same time, they’re actively building larger suburban stores [1] which indicates a pivot, but that the format itself is still popular.

They’ve also added it to other venues like Climate Pledge Arena and Lumen Field in Seattle in the form of “Just Walk Out” [2]. You still need an Amazon One account to use it.

[0]: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon-shutters-some-c...

[1]: https://www.winsightgrocerybusiness.com/amp/topics/amazon-go...

[2]: https://justwalkout.com/

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#254

Post by novok »

phphphphp wrote: post #246
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #92

I used to visit one of the NYC the Go stores daily until covid happened. It was cute and surgically clean, worked wonderfully, and their inventory management was much better then CVS and Duane Reade which often sell out of things and have empty shelves for days. But nobody ever went there - no matter what time of the day I went, there would be one person doing inventory and stocking, two people standing by to help pe…

I don't know if they've evolved their approach, if my local store is an outlier, or if yours was an outlier, but I live near an Amazon store and go in a few times per week: the experience you describe doesn't match my experience. Over maybe 100 visits: there's usually a few people in there at minimum, the food is pretty good (as far as convenience food store goes) and prices are the same as similar stores. I sometime…

For a convenience store, they were missing items you'd find reliably in 7-11s, like charging cables or headphones, at least when i asked the guy at the front.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#255

Post by Laaas »

orangepurple wrote: post #5
Laaas wrote: post #2

Is this because of shoplifting? In that case, an innovative (dystopian?) solution would be to place AI-guided water cannons to shoot thieves.

Full height turnstiles activated by a digital ID would reduce this problem to a manageable level

Indeed, it makes you wonder why this is not the case already. It does not seem like an especially hard thing to do.

It makes you wonder why they decided this was a good idea in the first place. Seemed sort of obvious that they'd have a shoplifting problem in a region where it's already not too uncommon.

Perhaps they assumed the surveillance would deter thieves, but surveillance is only a deterrence if the local police can afford to enforce the law effectively.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#256

Post by novok »

passwordqwe wrote: post #243
Spivak wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people so weird about food? What about quinoa made it associated with rich yuppies? If you didn’t already know you would probably assume the main consumers would be dudes who want their chicken and carb to have even more protein.

There's reports of prisoners complaining about the torture of being fed salmon all the time, because it used to be common food. People signal their class and status through everything, also through food.

Salmon not prepared, handled or stored properly or not served fresh can taste pretty bad and smell pretty bad compared to other meats. Seafood in general goes bad fast compared to beef or pork for example.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#257

Post by kube-system »

bogomipz wrote: post #251
kube-system wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all uniform packages that meet strict requirements. Grocery stores, including Amazon cashierless stores, sell things like produce. Picking an apple, banana, or bunch of grapes off a shelf is more difficult for a machine. The items are not uniform in size or shape. For a lot of produce, no mechanized handling system exists for quantities smaller than a bushel.

If you look at the photo at the top of the first link you can very clearly see that almost every single row has different size package footprints, not only from row but even between packages in the same row. There is no uniformity present. Further from the second link, there is no uniformity from machine to machine which is fundamentally no different the variation and shelf configuration from from shelf to shelf or a…

Having a package is a significant uniformity. Having a conveyable shape is a significant uniformity. Produce is often packaged only in bushel quantities, which are not the quantities that shoppers purchase.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#258

Post by roncesvalles »

paxys wrote: post #206

The cashierless thing is fine, but is never going to be the reason people pick one store over another. The problem with Amazon Go is that they have been trying to target the "upscale convenience store" demographic which doesn't really exist. If getting rid of human labor lowers operating costs then why doesn't that reflect on the price tag on the shelf? Charging 2x what the CVS next door does defeats the purpose. Mor…

Not sure if it's the same in the US but in Canada the convenience store is already inherently an upscale destination because of how much more everything costs compared to a supermarket.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#259

Post by Symbiote »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #236
paxys wrote: post #206

The cashierless thing is fine, but is never going to be the reason people pick one store over another. The problem with Amazon Go is that they have been trying to target the "upscale convenience store" demographic which doesn't really exist. If getting rid of human labor lowers operating costs then why doesn't that reflect on the price tag on the shelf? Charging 2x what the CVS next door does defeats the purpose. Mor…

> but is never going to be the reason people pick one store over another. speak for yourself. I commonly wait in line at the walgreens near me for longer than I was shopping for. If I had the choice between walgreens and the exact same store with cashierless tech I'd never go to walgreens.

There's the middle option. Last year my local discount supermarket replaced one checkout lane and a shelf of alcohol with 6 self-checkout machines.

So far, I've never seen a queue for these, and they're quick to use.

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