Some stumbles for Amazon Go
Any experienced restaurateur knows the unexpected has a way of disrupting a grand opening, no matter how much debugging and dress rehearsing is done beforehand. So only the hardest hearted would have snickered as Amazon worked through some embarrassment in the startup this week of its new Amazon Go food shop/c-store hybrid, even if the venture does pose new competition.
First, there was the irony of having a blocks-long line form outside a venture that boasted it would forever spare patrons the aggravation of a queue. But it was opening day, and few concepts have been hyped as much as Go, whose promise is to reconceive the retail experience. It drew a bigger crowd then was expected. So what?
But that wasn’t the only whoops. A real breakthrough of the format is the elimination of a checkout. Patrons gain entry by flashing a QR code on their phones. They take what they want, then leave, with state-of-the-art tech recording the order and automatically charging the patron’s credit card.
Some louts reportedly figured out how to get inside without revealing their identities, though it’s not clear how. Once inside, there was no electronic trace of them. And at least one customer admitted to shoplifting, albeit unintentional. CNBC tech reporter Deirdre Bosa tweeted that she’d not been charged for one of the items that was in her bag while exiting the Seattle prototype on Day One.