Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#81

Post by dylan604 » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

SeanAnderson wrote: post #50

Well, that article made me nervous for a second! I love my Amazon Fresh grocery delivery. I started using it during Covid, but could never go back. It's so nice having groceries feel automated instead of a semi-daily chore. I eat much healthier and the rationale for using DoorDash evaporated. Absolutely zero interest in a physical version that lets me check-out easier, though. So, I can see why they're making this sw…

> It's so nice having groceries feel automated instead of a semi-daily chore

One of a my previous jobs had a grocery store on the way home. I took to stopping in pretty much daily. It allowed for a bit of decompression after work before coming home. It was very convenient to always have exactly what was needed for that night while being therapeutic at the same time. After switching jobs, losing that was probably the most noticeable thing about the new job

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#82

Post by buildsjets » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

SirFatty wrote: post #31

justonceokay wrote: post #13

I’m in an interesting place. Here in Seattle I am two blocks from one of the largest Amazon Fresh stores. It was built on the former location of a local grocer. The construction was almost complete before Covid hit, but Amazon shuttered the store during that time. As a result there was no groceries in my neighborhood from 2018-2023. Now it seems Amazon is going to leave us a grocery desert yet again. They were piloti…

"non-union jobs program people at the registers because Amazon believes that cashier is a sub-human role." What grocery stores still have union workers?

My brother has worked as a stocker for King Kullen in New York for 20 years and is a union worker.

In the Seattle area where the poster is from, pretty much all the grocery stores are unionized. Workers at big stores like Safeway, Fred Meyer, QFC, and Albertsons, and local stores PCC, Uwajimaya are represented by UFCW3000. https://ufcw3000.org/shop-union

Additionally, Teamsters 174 organizes a lot of the grocery freight workers. https://teamsters174.net/warehouse-and-grocery/

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#83

Post by giraffe_lady » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 4:55 PM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #65

proee wrote: post #26

Has anyone used their go stores? I'm curious how the experience felt from a consumer standpoint. Do you feel welcomed or more like a thief? I remember WAY back in the day when Arby's implemented touch screen ordering (on CRTs!) and it was a very quirky process. An Arby's employee would sit behind the counter and stare at you while you spent 5 minutes poking a CRT display. Very slow and very impersonal. They discontin…

Every time I walk into a McDonalds I see people who will rather stand 5 minutes at the counter waiting for a human cashier than use one of the available kiosks. I'm sure some are paying cash but there are certainly people who are just not comfortable with technology. The Go stores were a great experience but they would certainly be uncomfortable for anyone other than early-adopter or tech-forward types of people. I w…

A lot of people have trouble using those and it's not just tech discomfort or whatever. You have to be able to hold your arms up in front of you, touching specific points in space. The UI is not good and does not provide good moment-to-moment feedback about whether you've pressed a button or which one. You have to be moderately-to-strongly literate, you have to wrap your head around the menu organization, know what you're looking for by name and be able to guess where it is in this system.

I've watched so many people struggle to use these machines for so many different reasons. Pretty much anyone with a physical or cognitive disability will be better off with the cashier. Sucks they have to wait much longer for one now.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#84

Post by colinplamondon » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

Cornbilly wrote: post #74

mjr00 wrote: post #18

> On April 4, 2024, it was revealed that Amazon's "Just Walk Out" technology was supported by approximately 1,000 Indian workers who manually reviewed transactions. Despite claims of being fully automated through computer vision, a significant portion of transactions required this manual verification. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Go ) Wonder how much of this is due to economics since computer vision tech ne…

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

Why would they face consequences? Every store has video surveillance that can be reviewed.

They trusted their tech enough to accept the false-positive rate, then worked to determine / validate their false positive rate with manual review, and iterate their models with the data.

From a consumer perspective the point is that you can "just walk out". They delivered that.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#85

Post by danans » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

These stores were solving for an Amazon problem (brick and mortar stores without the expense of workers), and not any significant customer problem.

They often put them in places, hoping that people would be attracted by marginally lower prices and brand extension, all while removing one of the primary appeals (for most people) of in person grocery shopping: impromptu community socialization, even if it is simply greeting the checkout worker.

I'm not surprised they failed.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#86

Post by bumblehean » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

g947o wrote: post #39

These 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.

Same here. A local grocery store and several other local businesses got bought out and demolished so Amazon could build a new Fresh store.

I guess Amazon pulled out of the project halfway through, since for the last ~2 years there's been a half-finished building just sitting there completely abandoned in our town center.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#87

Post by jedberg » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

I don't know about other areas, but here in the Bay Area (or at least Silicon Valley) our Whole Foods has subsumed all the services provided by Amazon Fresh (and Go really never worked). So we're not really losing any services, just the brand name.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#88

Post by givemeethekeys » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 4:58 PM UTC

giraffe_lady wrote: post #52

theanonymousone wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did "outsourced workers get (relatively) much more expensive after"?

India specifically is in the middle of a massive years-long labor movement that is changing the terms of work there and I believe shifting the degree of alignment with western corporate outsourcing though I'm not very informed about the details. Scale is beyond comprehension though, there were 250 million people on strike one day last summer. This is not ever really covered in western media or mentioned on HN for rea…

Americans can’t afford to strike like that.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#89

Post by liveoneggs » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

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…

The delivery shoppers are especially bad at whole foods. There really must be a critical mass where having a grocery warehouse makes more sense than these people meandering around.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#90

Post by 1980phipsi » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

minimaxir wrote: post #27

The Amazon Go stores in San Francisco were weird. They always had no people shopping in them, which would make sense given the increased efficiency, but it amplified the "am I stealing?" vibe. And the cost of goods wasn't made any cheaper than comparable stores in SF despite the touted increased efficiency.

The lack of people in them was the thing about going to one that always felt weird to me.