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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

#261

Post by coredog64 »

cyberax wrote: post #198
hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Except that you don't. Typically, you have maybe one small store selling random junk reasonably close to you. At high prices, beca…

There's probably 5 CVS locations (and 3 Chase private banking lobbies) between your subway stop and your apartment :)

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#262

Post by Chris2048 »

lelandfe wrote: post #144
randycupertino wrote: post #108

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…

Did he have a patent?

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#263

Post by pixl97 »

pessimizer wrote: post #238
randycupertino wrote: post #108

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…

Walmart isn't a budget grocery store, though. Its prices are higher than actual grocery stores (like Safeway.) Also, everyone is WAY cheaper than Instacart.

>Walmart isn't a budget grocery store,

The answer to this is complex, it has any number of products that are cheaper than products of similar quality from any other store. Places like Safeway/Aldi typically beat on price on very generic items that may or may not have similar quality.

The biggest thing to watch for at Walmart is price discrimination dependent on location. Back in the days I used to shop with them (read made less money) picking a store in a poorer neighborhood could save $10 to $30 dollars on the same car of items.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#264

Post by coredog64 »

spike021 wrote: post #112
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…

> You constantly have to work around employees fulfilling online orders To be fair I've noticed this in multiple supermarket chains the last few years. Although they aren't usually employees, they are instacart runners or whatever. I go fairly often to a Sprouts grocery store and there are times I need to avoid multiple people clearly doing an Instacart run with 2+ carts full of items. Shelves are often emptier than…

Walmart is particularly bad for this: The employees do the picking and they have giant carts that monopolize the aisle. You're stuck waiting for them to scan and bag 8-10 popular items before you can get in there and grab the one thing you need.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#265

Post by OkayPhysicist »

AppleAtCha wrote: post #174
vikingerik wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self checkout is fine, if the happy path works. If everything scans once and doesn't accidentally scan a second time, if everything scans at the price you thought it was posted for, if you don't have any controlled substances requiring approval, if the weight sensor doesn't freak out incorrectly or from putting your bags on it, if it accepts any coupons you have, if it accepts and processes your payment method correc…

Yeah I agree that it can potentially go wrong but in my experience here in east TN the machines have gotten better to the point that hasn't happened for me in the past few years. Also it seems like the "just walk out" process would have more potential error modes but I never visited one.

The best machine I've seen so far is one in my local gas station, where there's just a surface and a camera. Toss whatever you want onto the surface, all haphazard like, check that the screen agrees with reality (it always has so far), and bump your watch/phone/credit card and walk out. We're talking substantially less than 30s, oftentimes less than 10s.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#266

Post by julianozen »

Amazon Fresh had no reason to exist. They closed down a great Whole Foods near me and replaced it with a store with minimal changes to safeway/albertsons. Heavy carts for automatic scanning that barely saved time at checkout.

I will miss the grab and go tech in the Amazon stores. I was hoping they would successfully manage to sell that to other stores and make the tech wide spread in bodegas, gas stations and 711s

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#267

Post by ssl-3 »

mrighele wrote: post #219
hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

It's a 4-minute drive for me to get from my present house to the nearest grocery store (a Kroger of decent size).

I don't plan much for this journey. I don't bundle up on clothes or lace on a pair of stout boots first. I just kind of set forth (in my loafers) and drive over there -- even as everything is covered in snow, muck, and it it is 2 degrees (F) outside.

I went there last night for two tomatoes, a head of lettuce, and some cheese because those were the ingredients I was missing to make some tacos last night. While I was there, I remembered that I was running out of green tea at home and picked some of that up. I also grabbed a box of Barilla pasta because I walked by a display of it where it was on sale for 99 cents (oh noes they successfully upsold me on pantry supplies!).

There was no great investment of time or planning needed to accomplish this. I just went to the store for some odds and ends, and that was that. I might go back (or hit some other store) on my way home from work this evening -- since you mentioned apples, I kind of want one. (And I might buy exactly 1 apple. I can do that. It's Kroger, not Costco.)

I need to have the car anyway because it is necessary for me to own one in order to make money to stay alive in my environment. As long as this necessity remains, I might as well also use it for other things.

(I looked at some other addresses I've lived at, and their drive time to the local grocery store, on Google Maps. Despite "distance to grocery store" having not ever been on my radar at all when selecting a place to live, most of the places I've lived were a reported 2 minute drive to the local supermarket. The furthest was just 5 minutes out. I was pretty surprised by this at first, but looking back: That's actually a pretty fair estimate.)

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#268

Post by NickC25 »

nebula8804 wrote: post #254
netsharc wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Oliver analyzed state's tax rebates, 8 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bl19RoR7lc , he concluded that giving 1000 people Ferraris to drive around a pile of $30 million cash on fire would be more fiscally responsible...

I found it pretty funny when Mayor Mamdani of NYC pointed out that the people opposing him spent more money trying to stop him being elected than they would end up paying in increased taxes. It really is a game to those people. They can't bear to give up one cent or one ounce of control. Another funny story was that some substack writer (whom I forget sorry) noticed that Bill Ackman subscribed to their substack and u…

Jeff Bezos in FY 2024 filed for, and received, a $2k child tax credit.

While the company he was the founder of passed over a trillion dollars in market cap.

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