The general force behind this is the expansion of sub-same-day delivery which they have been pushing hard for the last year. Amazon fresh was a more traditional model which didn't fit in well with amazon's strengths (fulfillment, automation) because they tried to enter a market they were directly competing with (in-person shopping) and charged users for delivery in addition to their existing membership.

It's a welcome change IMO, amazon groceries are super cheap online and now delivery is free. They have been removing the fresh name from products for a few months now and replacing with amazon grocery. Certainly less confusion for consumers, at least

Related: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-same-day-fres... https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-same-day-fres...

I've only been to the Amazon Fresh in my neighborhood, haven't been to other locations, here is what my experience was like:

They resisted implementing self checkout for years before eventually folding. No digital wallets though, you have to either use plastic or link it to your Amazon account.

The whole dash cart system was a solution in search of a problem IMO. I'm already able to check out about as efficiently as possible. Frontloading the scanning time isn't really an amazing improvement. The store was never crowded enough for it to matter.

My biggest problem with the store was that it was lacking random pantry staples and supplies that you would expect from your primary grocer. Several times I showed up in desperate need of something for a recipe or household task and they just wouldn't have it.

The produce was actually decent quality and competitively priced, but my alternative (the local Ralph's) I think just had some kind of curse or something on it because the produce at that specific location was a consistent level of awful observed over 5 years.

I hope they replace it with a whole foods, much better store IMO.

Once their vision for "grab and go" vanished due to technological infeasibility [1] the entire premise for the stores vanished as well.

I suspect that they wanted to take a hail marry to see if somehow it was possible to get much greater efficiency compared to standard grocers, and it looks like that failed.

[1] it may come back. The technology is rapidly improving but they have bigger fish to fry ATM.

These were absolutely incredible when they first opened up right on until covid. The blue-apron style meal kits they had were actually really tasty and the gimmicky integration with Alexa to tell you the next step in the recipe was actually kind of useful when you were busy stirring a pot or cutting something and too busy to pull out the recipe card. It was like a 7-Eleven, but with the prices of a normal grocery store and higher quality prepared food. Not needing to deal with checkout felt freeing. I substituted many grocery store runs with a quick walk over to the original Amazon Go back in the day.

After covid, it was never the same. Open for shorter windows, closed on Sundays, reduced selection, no more meal kits etc.

I had many friends who worked on Amazon Go, so it's a bit sad to see that work come to an end.

I really liked the local Amazon Fresh, until they discontinued "just walk out" and replaced it with those hellish smart carts. I scanned one item successfully with the cart, got completely stuck trying to get it to scan a second one, handed the cart back to the employee, and never went back.

Amazon Fresh provided lots of good jobs in my community. Family members worked there. Good pay and they employed locally (or can walk to work). Same with whole foods. Too bad Amazon couldn't make it work. Interesting timing with their push for more online grocery offerings.

The "1000 people in India watching cameras" reveal was the moment the magic died. Once you know the wizard is just a guy behind a curtain, you can't unsee it.

The interesting question isn't whether the tech was ready. It wasn't. The question is whether Amazon learned anything useful from the attempt.

Computer vision for retail checkout is a legitimate hard problem. Occlusion, similar-looking products, people changing their minds. I've worked on CV pipelines and the gap between "works in the demo" and "works at scale" is brutal.

My guess: they collected a ton of training data from those human reviewers. Whether they'll use it for a v2 or just write it off, who knows.

Damn. I just got an email that they'll be discontinuing the palm payment June 3. I've barely used Fresh and Go, but I use this at self checkout at Whole Foods all the time. Beats finding the code to scan and using Apple Pay.

> We're reaching out because you have an active Amazon One account. Amazon One palm authentication services will be discontinued at retail businesses on June 3, 2026. You can continue using Amazon One at participating locations until that date.

> Amazon will automatically delete Amazon One user data, including palm data. No action is needed from you.

There are around 12 Amazon Go / Amazon Fresh in the metro Chicago area. Unless all employees are part-time employees (and assuming around 10-ish employees per store), I seriously wonder how they got around Illinois WARN requirements [1] requiring 60 days advance notice of the closures.

[1] https://labor.illinois.gov/laws-rules/conmed/warn.html

I’m in an interesting place. Here in Seattle I am two blocks from one of the largest Amazon Fresh stores. It was built on the former location of a local grocer. The construction was almost complete before Covid hit, but Amazon shuttered the store during that time. As a result there was no groceries in my neighborhood from 2018-2023.

Now it seems Amazon is going to leave us a grocery desert yet again.

They were piloting smart carts at the location. The cart scans your items so checking out you just push the cart through a scanner that weighs it. But this invention was like a microcosm of Amazon’s whole fuckup with groceries. The problem with the store wasn’t that I couldn’t check out fast enough, it’s that it was a shit grocery store. They had popular products but they were missing all the unpopular, low margin products you need to actually cook (baking powder, shortening, tomato paste, soy sauce…). They only hire non-union jobs program people at the registers because Amazon believes that cashier is a sub-human role.

The previous store had an owner who would wander the aisles and chat with customers. The new store has Europeans with clipboards who watch you as you shop.