As many of you have probably heard, Amazon has recently joined in the grocery store business to compete with stores like Winn-Dixie and Publix, but they are doing it with a twist. Now these are not your normal grocery stores, these are cashier less, yes you read that right, cashier less. These stores with enhanced technology, give you the opportunity to place products into your cart, then that is added to your Amazon Cart (which you connect with your phone to your cart), and then when you finish, you walk through a barrier that automatically charges your Amazon cart. It almost feels like you are stealing the stuff right from the store. And if you need help finding anything inside of the store, there are Alexa stations set up throughout the store to assist you on your shopping needs. There are even dedicated areas in the store for you to return or even pick up any Prime packages.
First Amazon Fresh Store Located in Los Angeles, CA. (Amazon Photo)
Amazon is able to do this now because of the buying of Whole Foods for $13.7 billion dollars that happened in 2017. And the sole purpose of these stores is to compete with the big-name grocery stores and to possibly be able to purchase them and achieve profit because of it. These items are not priced at an outrageous rate because of the cashier less style of the store, you can friend great deals all around the store, and are cheaper than your normal grocery store prices. This comes at a time where social distancing is a must even with the numbers going down, so Amazon is taking advantage of this in order to make more money than before. There are currently 11 Fresh stores open across the United States, but they are preparing 28 more stores on the East Coast alone, with two coming to the Miami Downtown area.
Dash Carts in Amazon Fresh Store (Paul Bersebach, Getty Images)
The Amazon company hopes that with the addition of these new stores, they will be able to set up at least one in every single state across the United States so that every single American can enjoy this new way of shopping. This does have some downsides, the jobs that are lost because of this are significant, the staff alone of a regular grocery store is cut by 50% because of the cashier less system. With the inclusion of these new stores opening across the United States, the total number of Amazon physical stores (including Whole Foods Market’s) now is up to 550, and they hope to reach the 1,000 mark by 2025. Which is totally doable with the amount of money that this company makes to do this, it is a completely achievable goal. We will have to wait and see if the citizens of Miami will favor this style of shopping or prefer going to the normal stores.
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