For about five years an Amazon Fresh in Seattle was literally my closest grocery store but I never once set foot in there, simply because it felt icky and dystopian to let Amazon any further into my life. I wonder how many others felt similarly.
Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
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Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#282Doesn’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…
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…
That's literally their MO. They've been doing that forever.
Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Such tactics sound… illegal
Illegal in what way? They are not allowed to set prices lower than competitors or raise them at any time?
Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#284These 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.
sounds like you have an opportunity to open a grocery store?
Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
In all these discussions it would be really nice to have actual addresses and locations because the dream is obviously desirable but I just don’t know how often it occurs in actuality.
That'd be nice. Except... I only speak for myself here, but: While it would almost certainly be very easy for a sufficiently-motivated person to track me down and knock on my front door, I don't like broadcasting the details of where I am. I might occasionally mention something like "some small city in Ohio [of many hundreds]" when that seems pertinent to the context, but that's about the extent of what anyone will e…
Yeah I don’t need people to dox themselves, but even just generic “look at this apartment building, it’s built on top of a supermarket” (iirc I found that in downtown San Diego) would help.
And if it’s common and something people look for, it should be findable relatively easily.
Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#286Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dairy Queen
I lived in Quito Ecuador back in the late 70s/ early 80s. There was a hamburger place called "Burger Queen"--the name was in English, presumably to attract people who knew about Burger King. They had a sign that read "Casa del Whooper" (not Whopper).
We had a Burger Queen in town when I was growing up. They closed in I think the early to mid 80s and became a Hardees.
Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you share some examples in gaps of staples?
In my experience, it's less gaps and more lack of mainstream brands. The example that comes to mind is ketchup. At Whole Foods I can get generic store brand ketchup or a variety of fancy ketchups that cost 3-10x as much, but they don't have any variety of basic Heinz on the shelf. This "mid-market" gap is common for virtually every product category.
That’s true, but intentional because of the focus on organic and avoiding certain ingredients. That is one of the reasons why Whole Foods is better.
Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores
#289The "1000 people in India watching cameras" reveal was the moment the magic died. Once you know the wizard is just a guy behind a curtain, you can't unsee it. The interesting question isn't whether the tech was ready. It wasn't. The question is whether Amazon learned anything useful from the attempt. Computer vision for retail checkout is a legitimate hard problem. Occlusion, similar-looking products, people changing…
I wonder if this is what FSD really is sometimes.