(Image: CHS)
Amazon is reshuffling its efforts in the grocery industry and pulling its “just walk out” cashier-less technology out of stores. The tech giant is also pulling its Amazon Fresh grocery completely out of Capitol Hill.
The Seattle Times is reporting the company announced the planned closure in a Wednesday meeting with employees. Sunday will be the E Pike store’s final day of business.
The closure comes as Amazon has backed off its smaller stores in favor of larger investments in full groceries and its Whole Food stores.
The Capitol Hill Amazon Fresh will close seven and a half years after CHS first reported on rumors surrounding the then-top secret project. The store opened in February 2020 as the company’s first Amazon Go-branded grocery featuring the cashier-less technology powered by sensors, cameras, and, it turns out, humans.
Later transitioned to the Amazon Fresh brand, the Capitol HIll store stood out as an undersized member of the company’s rapidly shifting grocery family. We’re checking with Amazon to find out how many grocery workers are impacted by the closure. The Central District Amazon Fresh grocery at 25th and Jackson that opened in 2021 is slated to remain open.
Meanwhile, the near-8,000-square-foot grocery will soon stand empty on the ground floor of the AVA Capitol Hill apartment building.
What appetite there might be for another grocery to move in remains to be seen. The neighborhood’s Safeway at 15th and John is lined up for redevelopment in coming years and one of Capitol Hill’s three QFCs is permanently shuttered — and will soon be the temporary home of the Punk Rock Flea Market — on 15th Ave E. Broadway remains home to two QFC stores including one at Broadway and Pike.
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hmm interesting as that place is always busy and usually has way better prices than qfc
I would bet very good money that it was operating at a massive loss, especially given the footprint & cost that must have been sunk into the location on infrastructure alone (hundreds of specialty cameras, shelves, etc.), and the labor on the back end–including the 1000+ workers in India who were monitoring the “just walk out” store customers. That in particular blew me away to learn, I’d definitely bought into the whole “it’s AI and cameras doing all the work!” thing Amazon led us to believe for so long. But even if they were getting paid very poorly compared to Seattle workers, it just seems so unlikely that the savings of not having people doing check out was enough to make it actually profitable, especially with their prices being so much lower than other brick-and-mortars.
Basically, the impression I’ve gotten is that it was more of an experiment than anything else, and they used cheap prices in order to get people in the door so they would participate in said experiment. Could be wrong though!
What a joke. It barely lasted but stock levels were low so it was a clue. Although some of their prices were dumb they did have some cheaper meat than the Questionable Food Center. Was also nice you didn’t have to dodge the druggies to get into the Amazon store at least.
Meanwhile how about a second Trader Joe’s… some of them are 8,000 square feet.
Inevitable. Entire “just walk out” operation depends on a thousand Indian employees paying real close attention. Not a futuristic tech miracle. Smoke and mirrors.
This^^^
Amazon “AI” aka “Abused Indians”
Exactly this! It was always just an army of low-paid workers watching the cameras and inputting data.
I love this store and will sorely miss it. I’ve had a bad feeling ever since Amazon shut down the store at UVillage that they’re on a slow journey toward totally getting out of the brick and mortar business…
The article literally says they are trying to get more into grocery business just with bigger stores.
That’s the power of branding, aint it? (Utterly Ridiculous!)
That sucks, it was way more convenient than the security maze and overall sketchiness of the QFC. I kind of hope they sell the tech though, it was cool tech and genuinely no lines.
The tech’s already in-use at stadiums and airport convenience stores, but I don’t think I’ve heard of it being used at regular stores beyond Amazon’s. My guess is that that’s for a reason, and that financially, Amazon is the only company that it currently makes sense for when it comes to regular stores.
I’m guessing that while it’s not great as a point of sale system, it’s probably gathered enough data to train some passable models for AI-run security cameras and we will sing Ring 2.0 in the commercial market…
I really like the store. There were some serious gaps in what they carried but their bakery selection was good and they were great to just swing by and pick up a few things without having to deal with anything or anybody.
What kind of creative fun things can that space be used for while they’re looking for a long term tenant? Punk Rock Flea Market is already spoken for. Maybe the Museum of Museums could set up there for a few years?
Uggggh, this place has been so convenient for me since they opened just pre-covid. Not looking forward to forced shopping for basic items back at the grim QFC.
I never used it, but I will say, having its windows smashed in every may 1st is not funny and now business are like, “our sales are bad.” Or “we can operate in this neighborhood because of traffic.” When really it’s the fact that no one is protecting the business on the hill, unless you are a bar or a multibillion dollar company.
That’s literally not the reason it’s closing (also I never saw a window smashed in), but feel free to keep living in your fantasy land
So you think that a company the size of Amazon made the decision to close that store because once they had a couple of windows broken?
Or maybe they closed that store, along with many that use that technology because they gathered all of the data they needed?
What exactly are you basing that decision on?
Yep! People like there property protected. And that little stretch of pike is a bit ratchet. Just because it’s capitol hill does not mean it’s not ratchet. As a person from the hood. Nice things aren’t known want to want to kick it too long in the hood. And based on all the shootings and stabbing and muggins and drug usage, I’d say that it’s the hood.
Right, because the suits in weekly business report meetings who have never been within 500 miles of the store give a damn about “how hood” the location one of their company’s stores is.
Yeah, it’s not. Even if every window of the store was broken every May 1st, that wouldn’t even be a blip on the financial report for a store like this compared to the overall cost of running their “Just Walk Out” operation.
Your comment reads like it was generated by an AI bot. Regardless, Pike/Pine, especially that stretch, is nowhere near what a rational person would consider dangerous enough to be labeled “the hood.” That you think it is, makes me believe you’ve never been to a truly dangerous neighborhood much less from one.
Ha ha, yeah, what the hell was he talking about? I’ve lived half a block from that stretch of Pike for years, and it is extremely bougie, and a zillion miles away from “the hood.”
You have never been on that stretch then. Sweet Jesus.
“People want their property protected”. What people? George and Martha Amazon who own that store? Amazon’s revenue for 2023 was 575 billion dollars. “oh the price of those windows, we just can’t manage that devastating cost”.
That “ratchet” stretch that also includes Salt & Straw Ice Cream, Taku, RedHook BrewLab, Biang Biang Noodles, R & M Desserts, Tavlota, The Belmont, Half & Half Donuts, La Josie’s, Meet Korean BBQ, & Menya Ramen, some of the most popular and well reviewed restaurants on the hill, with great sidewalks and well manicured shrubs and trees, is ratchet?
The apartment’s that Amazon Go is in the first floor of are very expensive, how could that be on a ratchet block?
Stop. You want to bend everything to your world view, when Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world who got what they wanted out of that experiment and are moving on.
The calling card of a dumb hump spectator is projecting their own small rationales on anything else, just to voice their own discontent and have some mechanical theory to why things happen.
Wooooo. Get that corporate crap out of here!
Yeah. Booooooo. I get rid of qfc and Safeway too.
Yeah, no one wants a good selection of products at low prices and with union workers! Stick it to the man.
YESS!!! Every Amazon loss is a WIN to reclaim Seattle. Sorry, not sorry Amazon… Bye Felicia!!!
You do realize that Amazon employs ~50K people in the Seattle area right? Any “loss” impacts real people with real jobs in our community not to mention the countless restaurants and small businesses that rely on the incomes from these employees. You’re perspective misses out on the biggie picture (coming from someone who does not work at Amazon).
“This entity that has us by the balls should be feared and respected because if anything happens to them, look out. Now hop in the dragon’s mouth, you don’t want to be responsible for it dying or lashing out, do you?”
Amazon’s “AI” turned out to be a thousand low wage “bots” watching every transaction real time from a slum over in India… Seattle’s “work-from-home” jobs safe for now!
What about the actual store employees? Plus the employees in Seattle that worked on the in-store initiative? I’m not talking about the “headlines” but the actual people impacted cause the store is closed and because their group is cut. Also my response was more about the “every Amazon loss” comment and thinking about the bigger picture if the company took too many losses.
100 percent. Amazon is a stain on Seattle
Not to defend Amazon, but…
Get that corporate crap out of here? Instead, you’ll shop at Krogers’ QFC or Amazon’s Whole Foods Market or Albertson’s’ Safeway, or Trader Joe’s, or 7-11?
Co ops exist. PCC?
And you think they could charge their outlandish prices without Amazon employees shopping at them? lol
The annoying children coming here dressed in black from the suburbs smashing them windows during Covid must be so happy
Those are the only cool people in the suburbs IMO.
Can we compromise and make it 3 dentist offices?
Amazon Dental. Just walk out and we’ll bill you later.
Okay but what does that mean for the parking lot underneath the Amazon?
What do you think they are gonna do? Fill it in with cement?
good riddance!