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Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

finance.yahoo.com

151–160 of 572 posts

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#151

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…

The delivery shoppers are especially bad at whole foods. There really must be a critical mass where having a grocery warehouse makes more sense than these people meandering around.

See Ocado, although things aren't going so well for them at the moment.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans can’t afford to strike like that.

You're most likely correct; I originally started writing this comment to refute your statement, but found that my assumptions appear to be wrong. Americans have the nearly the highest nominal and PPP income of OECD countries as of 2024, only behind Luxembourg, Iceland, and Switzerland [1]. India experiences substantially higher shelter and food insecurity and poverty rates than the United States. However, tech worker…

> It appears to be reasonable for a technology worker to be able to perform a sustained strike.

I don't think the strikes are done by tech people at all. Just normal workers.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#153

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.

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 hi…

While that is true for the quality-based things like deli/baker, there is one advantage to massive grocery stores that the stores inside the city can't compete with: selection. Every time I leave the city, I make a point to go to a suburban grocery store and walk down their massive spacious aisles to find new/different products that simply aren't stocked inside the city because shelf space is so limited. Entire aisles dedicated to chips!

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#154
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…

Yeah, we had one near us, close to the metro exit, and it was genuinely great when you needed to grab something for dinner on the way home. Once you knew where things were, you could be in and out in 20 seconds. That said, it never seemed busy compared to other grocery shops in the area, so I think a lot of people were put off by it feeling "weird" to shop without checking-out.

You can use the Apple Store app to purchase physical items at Apple retail locations (smaller items like cables or cases). I've used it a couple of times, and I feel very awkward using it, so much so that I'll walk out kinda waving the receipt/acknowledgement screen around so that staff/security can hopefully see I'm not nicking something.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like they artificially made their prices super low for the last couple years and intentionally operated at a loss as a business tactic to force out competition and kill off local grocery stores. There were instances of their prices being lower than Walmart or other budget stores. The avocados were $0.25 each and carrots were half price of ones in Safeway, even ground beef was weirdly cheap. One time as a compa…

> operated at a loss as a business tactic to force out competition and kill off local grocery stores Wouldn't surprise me. I know a guy who invented a device for truckers that became ubiquitous in truck stops across the US. This would've been like 2014. He refused to sell on Amazon, so Amazon duped his product and sold it at something crazy, like half price, until he agreed to list (at which point they dropped their…

I'm not aware of any Amazon product lines or organizations that specializes in devices for truckers. Can you provide a listing?

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A giant, multinational, multi-trillion-dollar corporation that will only bargain with individual people living paycheck-to-paycheck? Huh, what a weird power imbalance! Surely it doesn't have anything to do with their documented history of treating their blue-collar workforce like utter garbage.

I think Amazon are largely shitheads to their low level workers (and still assholes even to mid-level workers), and I am in no way defending them. I'm in fact sickened by them. I will never work for Amazon. But the implication above was that the non-union employee is the "sub-human" option. I find that attitude pretty gross too. Humans are human whether they are union members or not.

The “implication” is that Amazon finds them ALL sub-human and thus would hire to reduce any kind of representation or organizational power.

Work on your reading comprehension dude.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#157

The Amazon Go stores in San Francisco were weird. They always had no people shopping in them, which would make sense given the increased efficiency, but it amplified the "am I stealing?" vibe. And the cost of goods wasn't made any cheaper than comparable stores in SF despite the touted increased efficiency.

LOL, any found efficiency doesnt go to the consumer. The evidence is the widening wealth gap over the last 40 years. Its trickle up economics.

does competition not naturally drive competitors to reduce margins?

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#158

Hmm Amazon fresh was useless anyway. It was this weird niche of grocery delivery but for small urgent orders. I just don't have that need like ever, if I need a bottle of shampoo or a head of lettuce urgently I'll just go to the corner shop. Edit: oh oops I see this is about physical fresh stores, we never had those in the first place. Here in Europe Amazon fresh is a weird service for quick small grocery orders. For…

Yeah these are all going to be wrapped up into their same day delivery service. Amazon fresh was very expensive and required a fee on top of prime which unsurprisingly nobody wants to do

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#159

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.

Strong disagree, and I used to go to that Wegmans regularly. It's fine. Solid market. Whole Foods is equally fine, and excels in some ways. Neither is obviously better.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#160

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.

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 hi…

> all within walking distance of your apartment, you don’t need to deal with the hassles of finding stuff within a massive supermarket.

Is that really a thing though? I feel like arguing for quality is a strong argument, but between walking between small shops at the end of my work day and just doing one supermarket feels more efficient.

Finding stuff within a supermarket is also not hard once you've been once or twice.

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