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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

#301

Post by gamblor956 »

noboostforyou wrote: post #202
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…

> 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 iirc that's exactly what Amazon did to destroy diapers.com over a decade ago

Amazon did not destroy diapers.com.

Diapers.com aka Quidsi was already operating at a loss when it was acquired by Amazon. It's whole business model was using VC-funding to offer products below sustainable costs with the goal of eventually jacking up prices once they drove out smaller/local competitors. Amazon used its own business model against it by dropping prices even lower, knowing that the VC investors couldn't afford it.

Walmart passed on buying Quidsi when Walmart was thinking about launching its own e-commerce platform because the business model was unsustainable. Walmart decided they would rather spend several hundred millions building out their own platform then to buy an existing website with millions of customers.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#302

Post by malfist »

tshaddox wrote: post #253
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…

Interestingly, we only went to our local Amazon Fresh store a handful of times but it was always a perfectly fine experience. It seemed reasonably clean, well-stocked, and well-organized. Other than those new self-checkout shopping carts (which also actually worked well, even weighing produce), it was fairly indistinguishable from other grocery stores in our area. Amazon Go, on the other hand, always seemed like a de…

You should also know that the AI that enabled the Amazon Go experience was the Actually Indians type of AI. https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-just-walk-out-actual...

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#303

Post by groundzeros2015 »

kkukshtel wrote: post #233
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…

This is basically the playbook of every "disruptive technology" startup or FAANG initiative of a similar stripe - set prices incredibly low to bleed out competition and gain market share, then raise them once you are in the dominant market position.

Nobody on this forum believes in startups or technology anymore.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#304

Post by chasd00 »

ssl-3 wrote: post #267
mrighele wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 let…

just to let you know you're not alone, i'm in the same situation. I have a Tom Thumb 5-7min away depending on if i get caught in the one stop light. It has everything I need, capers to tampons, and i have the store memorized. There's also a pharmacy inside which is convenient. This is just SW of downtown Dallas TX ( maybe 3 miles ).

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#305

Post by aworks »

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.

I've had three failures in the last week. I had the "thought my bag was product" problem, the "I somehow double scanned" problem and the "need a reset but no one can explain why." The first and third were on the same visit.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#306

Post by chasd00 »

mcswell wrote: post #260
kid64 wrote: post #217

Earlier 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).

That's pretty funny, in the old movie Coming to America there was a scene parodying something similar but it was McDowells vs McDonalds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djI_ret3S9g

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#307

Post by phatfish »

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…

Having watched these people when I do my own shopping, it made me realise, if i ever needed get someone to shop for me, it wouldn't be on a busy weekend.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#308

Post by mancerayder »

mike50 wrote: post #239
mancerayder wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really, really depends what neighborhood you live in. Bakeries and especially butchers don't exist everywhere, and sometimes they (bakeries) suck. It's not Paris or Rome. And the prices are high in the expensive neighborhoods (and that's driven by proximity to offices in Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn). Some neighborhoods are both densely populated and a desert for quality, leaving only bodegas and overpriced a…

Maybe if you only shop at the mass market chains in the gentrified central part of the city. Go to Flushing and tell me that or just go to a Western Beef.

I predicted someone would say something about that topic, though I didn't think someone would use the term gentrified anymore. That's why I qualified it as "And the prices are high in the expensive neighborhoods (and that's driven by proximity to offices in Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn)".

That said Flushing is not only a long commute, I don't know if it would qualify as "pre-gentrified", would it?

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#309

Post by spprashant »

dgunay wrote: post #236

I've only been to the Amazon Fresh in my neighborhood, haven't been to other locations, here is what my experience was like: They resisted implementing self checkout for years before eventually folding. No digital wallets though, you have to either use plastic or link it to your Amazon account. The whole dash cart system was a solution in search of a problem IMO. I'm already able to check out about as efficiently as…

I guess I am in the minority but I really liked the dash cart. Apart from the occasional niggle, it worked as advertised once I understood the system. I get my own bags to the store, so I can directly bag items as I go and just walk out when done.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#310

Post by rurp »

lumost wrote: post #9
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…

Even that didn't work well, when I was at an airport recently I had investigated 4-5 items as I had some time to kill. When I was walking out it wanted to bill me for 70 dollars even though I only had a bottle of water and a candy bar. I have little trust that a corporate behemoth will do right by me and refund the discrepancy at an unspecified later time as it says it will on checkout.

This keeps me away from these sorts of stores if I can avoid them, which is pretty much always (so far, anyway). I would be absolutely shocked if the error rate was comparable to a normal checkout process and I don't want to waste the cognitive overhead of either wondering how much I'm getting ripped off by a corporation or having to go back and review and try to resolve overcharges.
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