Amazon Go Cashierless Supermarkets, Pop-Up Stores Coming Soon

I went to an Amazon Go store for the first time recently. I grabbed some sushi and a wrap, and it was surprisingly tasty and inexpensive. For the location and quality, it made me think they have to be taking a loss (or just breaking even) on the products.<p>The store itself was nice enough. But it was small, and felt like a novelty, like a lab experiment and not an actual convenience store. As a software engineer, I was also keenly aware of the massive array of tracking technology all around me, and that didn&#x27;t feel great.<p>I don&#x27;t really have any complaints. It was convenient, but not &quot;oh wow this changes my life&quot; convenient. If this kind of technology pushes down the prices (though that&#x27;s honestly hard for me to see how), that will be a benefit.

I&#x27;ve enjoyed the convenience of the Go stores since they opened, but one thing that&#x27;s popped into my head is how &#x27;classist&#x27; this type of store is, especially in a city like Seattle where they started.<p>To be allowed into the store requires a few prerequisites which unfortunately not everyone has the benefit of possessing; smart phone with data service, credit card, amazon account.<p>For most people this is no problem. But what about all the people who rely on cash based systems to exist? What about people who don&#x27;t have smart phones with internet plans (though this is becoming an increasingly small population, it&#x27;s still very prevalent)?<p>Now what happens to those people when this becomes a standard and the alternative options diminish? Food deserts in underserved (poor) neighborhoods are already wide spread in the US, this credit based system which relies on an app will only make it harder for people who already suffer.

I was a pretty regular user of the Go store near my commuter train home.<p>Lately there are numerous items at my store that have gone out of stock, some of them for a few weeks now, and telling them about it gets a shrug and a &quot;sorry, &#x27;corporate&#x27; controls inventory&quot; response. Not sure what &#x27;corporate&#x27; means here but okay.<p>Long story short - Go is a fun thingy but I don&#x27;t think they&#x27;re ready for retail. I deleted my app.

At my office there’s a fridge with a card reader. You can take whatever you want out of the fridge after swiping your card. There’s breakfast and lunch and snack items in the fridge. Some company has already replicated the Amazon Go model for a use case that ... I would argue ... makes more sense. (Unless they were first)

Wow if they can convince their competition to use the system, and they can use that data, that would be hugely valuable. Not just for grocery&#x2F;online sales but I&#x27;m thinking of data use for their fast growing ad network.

Airports make a lot of sense to me. Movie theatres kind of do. Supermarkets don’t. If I squint hard enough I can see it working (I’ve been to the Go store a couple times and it is indeed a great if weird experience), but food like vegetables seems harder to do this with than prepackaged sandwiches and sodas. How do you handle things that are priced by weight? For example potatoes, or steak. Make the customer print a label with a QR code the cameras can read? That sounds like a terrible experience, and the “solve” is more packaging and trash - something Amazon already causes a lot of.

Like it, or not, this is the future of retail.

I wonder how well these will do with the grab-and-go gangs that are currently working higher end retail in Chicago. Do they have reasonable security or simply depend on cameras to identify perps?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outline.com&#x2F;wxesVr" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outline.com&#x2F;wxesVr</a>

Raising the minimum wage to $15 and higher will hasten cashiers being replaced by machines. In the unionized grocery store I patronize, where there was recently a strike, they have reduced the numbers of cashiers and increase the number of self-checkout stations.

I wish they would open one in Playas de Tijuana.

As an European, Amazon Go seems like extreme over-engineering, with its vision-based system and all. I can already quickly scan items as I put them in my basket, either using a handheld scanner you pick up at the entrance, or my own mobile phone. You can also do it all at once in the self-checkout station. It already takes little to no time, and simply adding a very fast barcode reader to the basket itself or RFID would completely eliminate any time spent there. Payment takes five seconds with contactless &#x2F; Apple Pay. Most small supermarkets already have only one or two cashiers working at any time.

I went to Amazon Go because it was cool but the food was absolutely inedible.

Just curious if we have any statistics about how much time is saved per consumer?<p>TBH I don&#x27;t feel particularly happy about programmers removing retail jobs. Yeah for sure technology advances always remove some people from their jobs, but there are consequences.