Amazon opens its first CASHIERLESS supermarket in Seattle where customers can pick up groceries and simply walk out of the store without checking out or opening their wallets
- This is a larger scale version of its Amazon Go branded convenience stores
- Any item a customer touches gets added to their basket as they walk around
- When they leave anything in the basket is then charged to their Amazon account
- There are no checkouts and you leave with the bag that acted as your basket
Amazon is opening its first cashierless supermarket in Seattle where customers can pick up groceries and simply walk out of the store without checking out.
It will operate under the brand Amazon Go – the same name used for its two-year-old chain of Amazon Go convenience stores.
Shoppers scan a smartphone app to enter the store then a series of cameras and sensors track what they take off shelves and adds them to their basket.
When they walk out of the store anything in the basket – virtual and physical – is then charged to the card on their Amazon account.
There will be some staff to stock shelves and rotate produce – here a worker pushes a cart inside an Amazon Go Grocery store launching soon in set to open soon in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighbourhood
When customers arrive they sign in to the store using a special Amazon Go app and the person signing in pays for anything touched by people in their party
The store will carry a similar range to most mid-sized grocery stores but there will be nobody to checkout your goods and no bagging process
At 10,400 square feet, the supermarket is more than five times the size of the smaller stores convenience stores – which focused on sodas and sandwiches.
The new market stocks fresh baked bread, blood oranges, butternut squash and other food to whip up dinner or stock the fridge.
Amazon is not new to groceries. It made a splash in 2017 when it bought Whole Foods and its 500 stores.
It has also been rapidly expanding its online grocery delivery service around the world but is still far behind rival Walmart in the USA.
Staff in the store will stock shelves and manage a coffee station in the store rather than work the checkout or help customers with bagging groceries
Amazon isn’t new to groceries – it purchased Whole Foods in 2017 and has over 500 stores around the world – this is the first cashier-less full sized supermarket
Walmart, as the nation´s largest grocer, has more than 4,700 stores and has a successful online grocery service that lets shoppers buy online and pick up in store.
Amazon plans to open another type of grocery store in Los Angeles sometime this year, but the company said it won’t use the cashier-less technology at that location and has kept other details under wraps.
At the new store, families can shop together with just one phone scanning everyone in with anything added to the basket to the tab of the person who signed them in.
Shopper’s shouldn’t help a stranger reach something from the top shelf: Amazon warns that grabbing an item for someone else means you´ll be charged for it.
As well as no cashiers there will be nobody to bag groceries – with Amazon giving reusable bags to shoppers to fill as they shop then walk out with them at the end.
Customers will keep their phone on them throughout the shop and anything they pick up gets added to their basket – when they leave anything in the basket gets charged to their account
On arrival people collect a free reusable shopping bag that will act as a basket to place shopping in – when finished you just walk out with the bag and the shopping
A series of cameras and sensors constantly monitor every shelf and location – anything picked up is added to the virtual basket, anything put back is then removed
In the minimally staffed store there will be no deli counter, butcher or fishmonger.
Instead, packaged sliced ham, steaks and salmon fillets are sold in refrigerated shelves for customers to grab and add to their bag.
Other retailers and startups have been racing to create similar cashier-less technology and self service checkouts are appearing more often around the world.
Earlier this month 7-Eleven said it is testing a cashier-less store inside its Irving, Texas, offices.
Amazon declined to say if it plans to open more cashier-less grocery stores.
Since it launched its first Amazon Go store in 2018, the Seattle-based company has opened about 25 in big cities, such as Chicago, New York and San Francisco.