Amazon has opened its first full-sized cashierless grocery store in Seattle and it won’t make shoppers wait in line to check out.
The project, Amazon Go Grocery, is the latest Amazon innovation in the grocery industry, opened to customers in Seattle on Tuesday after five years in development, the Hill reported.
The store is 10,400 square feet, making it over five times the size of the smaller Amazon Go stores, and stocks everything from fresh fruit, a variety of meats and seafood, local artisan breads, and beer and wine, according to the Amazon Go Grocery page.
Employees in the background. Amazons latest large grocery store has no cashiers https://t.co/rnnyTJc4Qk
— Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) February 25, 2020
Shoppers can walk into the store, pick up their groceries, and walk out after the cameras and sensors track what’s taken off the shelves or shoppers scan a smartphone app when entering the store, the page, accessible on the Amazon app, says. If multiple people are shopping together, they only need one app to scan them in, although Amazon warns that a quirk of the seamless auto-checkout can happen when someone grabs for a grocery as a favor for someone else, and they get charged for it instead of the person intending to buy it. (RELATED: Seattle’s $13 Minimum Wage Has Hurt Low-Income Workers)
Amazon has been introducing the brand into the grocery scene for years, most notably in 2017 when it bought Whole Foods and its 500 stores. It also offers its online grocery delivery service.
While the new store removes the inconvenience of waiting in line, there will not be grocery baggers or a deli counter, as everything will be stocked on shelves. The stores will have employees to stock shelves and provide customer service.
Amazon declined to say whether they’d be opening more cashierless grocery stores, U.S. News reported.