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Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#131

Post by moregrist »

PaulHoule wrote: post #96
Bluecobra wrote: post #76

Doesn’t surprise me. I frequently shop at Amazon Fresh in store and it’s a mediocre experience. It’s a poorly run store with no visible manager making sure things are in order. You constantly have to work around employees fulfilling online orders and they aren’t helpful. I always find expired groceries/produce on the shelf so I have to spend a lot of extra time inspecting each item. The only reason I put up with thei…

Wegmans opened a store at the Brooklyn Navy Yard just to show people in NYC what a real supermarket looks like. I mean, you might be impressed with Whole Foods if all you know are those bodegas that have around NYC but if you've been to a real supermarket Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh and such are not impressive at all.

I don't know the Wegman's in NY at all, but the one I used to use in the Boston area was ... okay?

It was a good grocery store with decent produce, a good frozen section, some nice specialty items, and some decent prepared meals. I would put it at roughly the early-2010s era of Whole Foods with slightly better prices. Now that I'm no longer working near there, I don't miss it much.

So I've never understood the hype. But I've also been told that the Boston stores were pretty mediocre compared to the ones in NY and especially Ithaca.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#132

Post by Fernicia »

cmiles8 wrote: post #7

Their fate seemed sealed when it was revealed a bit back that the “just walk out” technology was more hype than substance. Just lots of people watching what you’re doing on camera vs an actual AI that worked well at mass deployment scale. A good idea, poorly executed. Reports said the “AI” was largely 1000+ people in India watching the cameras. If Amazon actually managed to build AI that worked well at a decent cost…

> Reports said the “AI” was largely 1000+ people in India watching the cameras.

This was totally fake news though. Those people were labeling training data and reviewing low confidence labels, after the fact. There wasn't ever live monitoring of shoppers.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#133

Post by nebula8804 »

g947o wrote: post #39

These bastards drove out some nice stores near me (supposedly the lease ended and did not renew) and rebuilt the buildings in order to open an Amazon Fresh location. That Amazon Fresh store never opened. Now we have a giant empty storefront nobody uses.

Reminds me of the time they made towns all around the US do a dog and pony show to attract "HQ2" and then just located it where Bezos wanted to be all along. I remember AOC getting it right all along, she did the most milktoast of pushback in her district and it caused Amazon to huff and puff and just walk away(causing many property speculators to lose out). She got raked over the coals but a few years later and the place HQ2 ended up didn't fare so well. AOC was vindicated.

My hope is that more towns learn from your experience and don't tolerate this nonsense anymore.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#135

Post by PKop »

mitaphane wrote: post #116
proee wrote: post #26

Has anyone used their go stores? I'm curious how the experience felt from a consumer standpoint. Do you feel welcomed or more like a thief? I remember WAY back in the day when Arby's implemented touch screen ordering (on CRTs!) and it was a very quirky process. An Arby's employee would sit behind the counter and stare at you while you spent 5 minutes poking a CRT display. Very slow and very impersonal. They discontin…

I use the one situated in Seattle, Amazon HQ. It's just like self-checkout at a grocery store with fewer steps. The entrance/payment mechanism is Amazon One (a palm scan associated with a payment wallet). At Whole Foods, it's used as an optional payment option at checkout. It's convenient; I only ever remember one problem where it thought I had purchased an item that I picked up and decided on something else. I dispu…

> I disputed it online

Oh man this is what consumers would love to do, have to constantly adjudicate false positives online which they'd have to track to make sure didn't happen. What nonsense.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#136

Post by count »

kotaKat wrote: post #64

Curious thought - will they be shutting down other “just walk out” powered stuff like Hudson Nonstops in airports? I also know some Amazon warehouses had an entire Just Walk Out powered concessions area in their breakroom for purchasing snacks in partnership with one of their canteen vendors.

Nah, they're still actively selling/implementing the backing service/tech for other orgs.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#137

Post by [deleted] »

guyrt wrote: post #68
MattDamonSpace wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be rude but there’s 4 Amazon Fresh locations in the greater Seattle area and each of them is next to multiple other large/small grocery options. For instance, the one in north Seattle (Shoreline) is within eyesight of a Safeway, a Sprouts, two international markets and a chef wholesaler. The other three locations are similarly crowded with options. What food desert are you referring to?

Jackson St location is the only walkable option in its neighborhood. It wasn't very good (terrible selection, stocking issues, slowly increasing locked section) but it was convenient.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#138

Post by jinushaun »

ceejayoz wrote: post #100
PaulHoule wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wegmans opened a store at the Brooklyn Navy Yard just to show people in NYC what a real supermarket looks like. I mean, you might be impressed with Whole Foods if all you know are those bodegas that have around NYC but if you've been to a real supermarket Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh and such are not impressive at all.

I'm in Wegmans' home town, and the enshittification process has hit them hard in recent years.

No! Wegmans was amazing when in lived in NY. We would actually go out of our way to shop at Wegmans and plan our weekend around it.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#139

Post by kotaKat »

count wrote: post #136
kotaKat wrote: post #64

Curious thought - will they be shutting down other “just walk out” powered stuff like Hudson Nonstops in airports? I also know some Amazon warehouses had an entire Just Walk Out powered concessions area in their breakroom for purchasing snacks in partnership with one of their canteen vendors.

Nah, they're still actively selling/implementing the backing service/tech for other orgs.

That’s kinda what I figured. At this point it seems like they all have the same general configuration of coolers and shelves and the same cameras all angled in the same setup everywhere so I assume it’s all down to one very strict CV model or something…

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#140

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #96
Bluecobra wrote: post #76

Doesn’t surprise me. I frequently shop at Amazon Fresh in store and it’s a mediocre experience. It’s a poorly run store with no visible manager making sure things are in order. You constantly have to work around employees fulfilling online orders and they aren’t helpful. I always find expired groceries/produce on the shelf so I have to spend a lot of extra time inspecting each item. The only reason I put up with thei…

Wegmans opened a store at the Brooklyn Navy Yard just to show people in NYC what a real supermarket looks like. I mean, you might be impressed with Whole Foods if all you know are those bodegas that have around NYC but if you've been to a real supermarket Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh and such are not impressive at all.

This comment completely misunderstands why NYC (and the core of most major cities) is not impressed by a supermarket.

Wegmans is popular because Wegmansnis good. But if you have a local baker, a local grocer, a local deli, and a small grocery store within the same block, all within walking distance of your apartment, you don’t need to deal with the hassles of finding stuff within a massive supermarket.

You get the highest quality products from people who specialize in those products.

Further, when you don’t have to drive 20-30 mins to go to a grocery store but the stores you need are within a 5 min walk, or more likely, right by the subway exit when you’re returning from work, you buy stuff as you need it, rather than stocking up for days.

Thats why Wegmans opened a store in Brooklyn Navy Yards in an area that’s close to no mass transit, because supermarkets are valuable in car centric areas and not as useful in walkable dense neighborhood.

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