Amazon keeps shutting Restaurants, their retail stores, etc., but I for one am glad they are at least trying. I agree that the fiasco around the Indians running the show was a PR nightmare for their idea, but large companies running startup like ideas should be encouraged rather than disparaged (and I am no fan of Amazon just to be clear). I think this is one of those ideas where execution failed. If you are a busy worker, it is great to just head there and grab what you need, and walk out. Just faster all around.
Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
211–220 of 572 posts
Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
My store used to have a big bread oven, desserts made in-house, fresh prepared food made in woks etc. right next to the buffet table, etc. All gone now; the coffee shop got replaced by robots, they tried to close the seafood counter (with enough negative feedback they reversed it), etc. It's all made centrally now, for 3x the price and half the taste. All the kids went and got MBAs and the third generation family bus…
In Ithaca the coffee went downhill lately, that's for sure. On the other hand, my favorite drip coffee anywhere is made by machines that brew it by the cup.
Honestly, it's not even about the coffee. The lady working there would see me, greet me by name, ask after my kids, and start making my drink without me having to tell her my order. That was part of the Wegmans magic for a long, long time.
(Same reason closing the seafood counter got a big backlash. There's a similarly awesome guy working there. For now.)
Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#213Earlier 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…
One of the things I hated most about living in NYC was grocery shopping.
Having to walk meant you could only practically buy in small quantities, and visiting different places for different things was super annoying and inefficient.
Moving out and being able to take my car to the georcery store once a week and get everything I needed was one of the best quality of life upgrades from leaving.
Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Americans can’t afford to strike like that.
And Indians can? When India "shut down" for Covid, day labourers suddenly had no income, and no government support - they had to walk all the way to their home province (can't remember if the trains were even running). But oh well, Uberizing employment means the run-of-the-mill American worker can also live like that in the future... progress!
Americans have chosen to learn exactly how good they have had it. You get to watch!
Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#215Yeah, they've just closed the one near me. I think they underestimated how hard it would be, at least in the UK - the existing supermarket chains are already competitive, mostly pretty good, and people have surprisingly high brand loyalty to them. I don't think I've even talked to anyone who has shopped in Amazon Fresh, or even wanted to.
Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would they face consequences? Every store has video surveillance that can be reviewed. They trusted their tech enough to accept the false-positive rate, then worked to determine / validate their false positive rate with manual review, and iterate their models with the data. From a consumer perspective the point is that you can "just walk out". They delivered that.
Their initial advertising claimed near full automation by their "AI" system when, in reality, they had people manually handling around 70% of the transactions. I get that this is a message board for YC, so lying about your company's tech is considered almost a virtue but that is an unreasonably big lie to tell without getting your hand-slapped by some regulatory body or investor backlash.
I think investors like Amazon taking shots like this? It was never a broad roll-out, 43 stores is micro-scale for Amazon.
Still, would love to see a breakdown of why it didn't improve. Regardless of the accuracy at launch, I'd think that advances in AI would have been massively to their advantage. I wonder if security degradation hit them hard.
The entire system depends on a level of social trust that doesn't exist in American cities today. Similarly, the "Dash Cart" seems like a cheaper and easier way to accomplish the same thing.
At the end of the day, there's also a mismatch in the use case. If I'm going to a smaller format store, like they had, I'm not buying a ton of stuff. Self checkout is great, and minimal friction.
I'd think that improving the UX of self-checkout gets 80% of the way there with way less fraud, way less theft, and way less technology.
Still, I think it's wicked cool they took a big shot.
I know someone that worked on the project in the early days. It was always incredibly difficult technology, they were always behind on their accuracy targets, and the solutions were increasingly kludgy as they layered more and more complex systems on top. An honorable failure.
A lot of smart people really tried to make it work.
Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#217Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
What changes have you noticed?
My store used to have a big bread oven, desserts made in-house, fresh prepared food made in woks etc. right next to the buffet table, etc. All gone now; the coffee shop got replaced by robots, they tried to close the seafood counter (with enough negative feedback they reversed it), etc. It's all made centrally now, for 3x the price and half the taste. All the kids went and got MBAs and the third generation family bus…
That isn't something isolated to Wegmans or even supermarkets.
This[0] image basically says it all, and quality has only further nosedived since 2020.
[0]https://i.ibb.co/Zz2Mb6rF/e0vb5drbeh0e1.jpg
In general, it seems like the pareto products dont exist anymore, the midrange has basically dropped out for daily products and it's been bifurcated. If quality is a scale from 1-100, most places sell a 1, a 10, or you go to an artisanal place for a 90, for exorbitant prices.
But in the past a supermarket or toy store would have sold you an 80 for a reasonable price.
What sucks even more is that for example due to the cacao shortage, lots of products now contain less cacao for the same price. And usually down from 500g/250g to something like 485g/235g. Shrinkflation.
But, when cacao becomes cheaper or inflation stabilizes, companies don't think "let's push the quality back up for the same price", no, they'll pocket the difference. The same is planned to happen if Trump's tariffs get struck down. Businesses will get a huge refund, but the customers that got the costs passed along won't see a penny.
Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#219Earlier 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…
> 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,
Once you get used to have everything at a walking distance, you wonder how you could put up with having to drive to a supermarket.
Two are the main advantages.
The first is that you don't need to plan much in advance. Want to make hamburger tonight ? Cross the street, get meat from the butcher, get a couple of tomatoes and salad from the grocery store and the bread, and you are ready to go. I used to shop once a week and I had to have an idea of what I wanted to cook every day for the whole week.
The second is that this way you regularly eat really fresh food. My shopping list is always stuff like "two tomatoes", "three apples", "fish for tonight", "a loaf of bread". My fridge is mostly empty.
Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#220Wow, they just opened a brand new one in Philly less than two months ago. I've yet to shop there and I guess now I never will. It must have cost millions to clear that site and build a whole new building there. Just to abandon it. I wish I had money to waste like that.
Edit: it actually opened in August, so it was around for about six months instead of two.