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Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

finance.yahoo.com

401–410 of 572 posts

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I dunno to what extent the NYC lifestyle distorts the perception of stock market analysts. Do they think there are Duane Reades coast-to-coast? I used to joke that you couldn't get a good cup of coffee in NYC in the 1990s because there were 2 or 3 Starbucks on every block to fool stock market analysts that the country was saturated with them -- thus driving out the independent espresso bars that you'd find in fl…

Was there ever good coffee in NYC? I was a kid in the 90’s so I wouldn’t remember any time before. I grew up in NE and am convinced we 1) just haven’t really ever been on the forefront of coffee 2) invented Dunkin Donuts to flip off the coffee world (I know people sometimes say it is good but I think they are just being contrarian (although I will agree it is really not much worse than, or is just as good as, Starbuc…

> Was there ever good coffee in NYC?

Before all the third-wave shops came along? D'Amico, Sahadi's, Porto Rico, Zabar's, Gillies, and that's about it. You'd have to have been a coffee buff to seek those places out as a consumer, as they mostly served as suppliers to hospitality.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#402
Damn. I just got an email that they'll be discontinuing the palm payment June 3. I've barely used Fresh and Go, but I use this at self checkout at Whole Foods all the time. Beats finding the code to scan and using Apple Pay.

> We're reaching out because you have an active Amazon One account. Amazon One palm authentication services will be discontinued at retail businesses on June 3, 2026. You can continue using Amazon One at participating locations until that date.

> Amazon will automatically delete Amazon One user data, including palm data. No action is needed from you.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#403

If we lived in a high trust society, you could just trust people to scan their own items and walk out.

Most grocery stores I shop at have merchandise outside the front doors and between the doors and the registers. You could easily walk out with unpaid merchandise and no one would notice.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#406

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…

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…

And then they can’t figure out why the economics don’t work.

Phase 1: bankrupt the competition

Phase 2: ???

Phase 3: profit!

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#407
post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selling items for less than they cost to produce is known as "dumping" in international trade (where it is generally disallowed by trade organizations) and can be illegal in the US if the intent is to eliminate competition [0]. That last factor can be hard to prove, and I don't think the FTC is doing much about anticompetitive behavior these days. [0]: https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

The Biden admin went slightly harder against anti-competitive actions and anti-consumer actions by companies and all the billionaires freaked out and poured money into Republican campaigns in 2024 in order to roll all that back.

What was rolled back? There was no major change in action whatsoever, only rhetoric, which is meaningless. As for funding, Trump raised substantially less in 2024 than 2020 while Harris raised more money than any campaign ever has, by a wide margin. [1] Dark money also overwhelmingly flowed to the DNC. [2] And a large chunk of all of Trump's funding came after the previous administration tried to imprison him, which rather freaked people out - even those not particularly fond of him. That also likely played a significant role in the more DGAF presidency we're seeing today relative to 2016.

[1] - https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_election_campaign_finan...

[2] - https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/dark...

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#408

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.

I went to one once, and it still worked like a regular grocery store, too. The only reason I never went back was because they were expensive and in an awkward location. There were some items only discounted to Prime members, but for everything else, you could forgo the technology and Amazon integration and pay with cash or a card. It's not like the Amazon Go stores where you have to use their system.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illegal in what way? They are not allowed to set prices lower than competitors or raise them at any time?

> Amazon duped his product and sold it at something crazy, like half price Pricing below an appropriate measure of cost is generally considered predatory pricing. It is very difficult to enforce this, but that doesn't change the fact that it could be illegal and a violation of antitrust laws.

Amazon could also have the resources/know-how/volume to manufacture a comparable product that could be sold for half the cost
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