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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

#541

Post by davidst »

scoot wrote: post #471
davidst wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left the following comment some months ago, duplicating it here: [Disclaimer: Former Amazon employee and not involved with Go since 2016.] I worked on the first iteration of Amazon Go in 2015/16 and can provide some context on the human oversight aspects. The system incorporated human review in two primary capacities: 1. Low-confidence event resolution: A subset of customer interactions resulted in low-confidence c…

Obligatory /disclaimer/disclosure/. (Don't worry, most HNrs get this wrong for some reason. I will be downvoted for pointing this out, but whatever. It's a meaningful difference to those that understand.)

I have been making this mistake for decades. I am upvoting your comment to show thanks!

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#542

Post by kube-system »

rvnx wrote: post #540
kube-system wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminally, no. In a class action? every day.

It's common for companies to claim AI: Example: Tesla Cybercab with safety drivers, or Starship Technologies "autonomous" robots, which are remote controlled delivery robots.

Tech companies are also the most sued for securities fraud.

And in fact, Tesla was sued for securities violations by shareholders over the cybercab.

https://kehoelawfirm.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Tesla-Cl...

Starship Technologies is a private company.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#543

Post by mrguyorama »

rvnx wrote: post #539
afavour wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you just use vending/automat machines in these scenarios? Beers in particular are... not complicated. I believe the go tech makes the existing situation better but if you were to reimagine it from ground up I can't help but imagine you could do better.

Huge queues

Automats don't have to have huge queues.

One employee as a stocker/chef can support higher throughput in automat style than in counter style fast food service because you have a much more focused task (put food in empty cubby, repeat) than the normal process of "Take order, take money, get order, give customer, deal with mistakes"

They can have an entire wall full of panels for the same item, so that purchases are heavily parallelized. There's usually only a single digit number of items available.

Automats seemingly died because inflation made it hard to accept payment, but that has been a solved problem in vending machines since then.

Japan and some other places still do a lot of vending machine food, but the specific "Wall of items" Automat format enables great logistics that you don't get from vending machines. Weirder still, there are places in asia I have seen that have a AutomatWall style setup, but cook food to order, so you end up waiting!

You can't use an Automat for beer though, without some sort of external system to only allow use by "adults". But surely that's true of a vision system?

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#544

Post by mrguyorama »

dyauspitr wrote: post #445
Cornbilly wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great that they faced essentially no consequences for this. A sure sign that we have a functional and sane market.

It’s autonomous 80% of the time. That’s significant. Put another way, they only had to hire 1000 people instead of 5000.

It only takes 1 employee to staff 20 self checkouts for comparison.

For a full fat grocery store. With zero change or adjustment to the rest of the grocery store. And customers weirdly like self checkouts even when they are a dramatically worse outcome (compared to the highish bar of well trained cashiers)

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#545

Post by dyauspitr »

mrguyorama wrote: post #544
dyauspitr wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s autonomous 80% of the time. That’s significant. Put another way, they only had to hire 1000 people instead of 5000.

It only takes 1 employee to staff 20 self checkouts for comparison. For a full fat grocery store. With zero change or adjustment to the rest of the grocery store. And customers weirdly like self checkouts even when they are a dramatically worse outcome (compared to the highish bar of well trained cashiers)

What exactly is the point of a well trained cashier, what service do they provide. I guess I appreciate what the bagger does and the cashier knows the codes for the loose vegetables but those are minor benefits in my opinion.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#546

Post by kevstev »

Bluecobra wrote: post #511
kevstev wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is actually. I used to work in grocery e-commerce. The model is pickers in a store --> a "dark store" that looks more like a home Depot with only pickers, not open to public --> warehouse like environment with various levels of automation. This was a bit before the model of having Uber driver type delivery though. I am guessing that having the deliverers be close to the deliverees make it more economical to kee…

Peapod? I really miss their drivers, I had the nicest guy on my route and they always handled cold deliveries properly in those big green crates.

No, Walmart. Their drivers were actually quite nice as well, at least the ones I met. The standards were high, I have mixed feelings about Walmart overall with respect to their line level employees, but in general everyone meant well. This was quite a long time ago though, and we were still in "startup" mode and focused on gaining market share, as opposed to focusing on squeezing out as much profit as possible.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#547

Post by system2 »

Amazon Go had one of the best turkey pesto sandwiches you could buy for $6. It was my treat after driving back from the dog park. I felt sad after they closed that Go store. Coffee (Starbucks) was free with a minimum purchase of $5, which the sandwich covered. I miss that, but only that. There was literally nothing useful to buy on the go. All weird Amazon products, nothing close to 7-Eleven.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#548

Post by jeffrallen »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #450
Schlagbohrer wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile in East Asia they have no problem with tons of 24/7/365 stores, even fully vending machine stores. Heck even Europe has vending machine stores that are constantly open without even a door that could be closed, selling grocery basics.

America had 24/7 grocery stores, convenience stores, restaurants, and even some Walmarts before COVID. Now, at least in my area, thats a thing of the past. Still not as bad as Switzerland where everything closes early on Saturday and is closed on sundays. China has had 24/7 McDonald’s since forever, well, and lord of other things as well. But not grocery stores at least.

I don't know if anyone from Switzerland explained why this is to you, or if you are interested.

Swiss business hours limits are for worker protection. You are lucky to hang out on HN and work whenever you want. You neighbor who keeps your groceries on the shelf for you is happy to be home with his or her children in the evening instead of in the store.

Having a high trust society also includes treating all people with respect, so that they will be willing to trust you. Even the hourly workers who keep the world turning for the rest of us.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#549

Post by system2 »

fencepost wrote: post #123

The Fresh stores are kind of a weird shopping experience with a mix of normal, overpriced and bizarrely cheap at different times. I've gotten into the habit of stopping in to wander the aisles and check prices because of it (e.g. I stocked up on a bunch of canned soup when most (but not all) Progresso soups were $0.44 a month or two back, and I picked up some microwavable rice+quinoa pouches for my wife at $0.35 each…

They had cherries for $1.99 per pound while Ralphs or trader joes sold them for $5.99 per pound. I ate as much as I could while it lasted.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#550

Post by giaour »

twoodfin wrote: post #534
giaour wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The predatory pricing pattern the FTC would in theory sure over would be: selling items at an artificially low price until the competition goes out of business, then raising prices once you are the only seller left standing. It's the second step that makes it anticompetitive instead of just competitive

What does it mean to be “the only seller left standing”? If somebody’s out there making big margins because they don’t face competition, competition is likely to emerge!

Yes, but the monopoly seller has already demonstrated that they will operate at a loss until their competitors go out of business, which is a pretty big deterrent to any new market entrants. They've also demonstrated that no one will be making any money until either the monopolist or the new entrant is out of business, so who would actually launch a new business in that environment?
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