Amazon earlier this month quietly opened Amazon Grocery, a new small-format grocery concept the retail giant is testing, that features grab-and-go foods, coffee and major-label grocery products.
The first Amazon Grocery is located in downtown Chicago, in a building that also houses an Amazon-owned Whole Foods Market.
The 3,800-square-foot store offers a selection of 3,500 products intended as grocery fill-ins, as well as coffee and grab-and-go meals such as sandwiches, salads, poke bowls and sushi. There's also baked goods and a self-serve frozen yogurt machine.
The store is larger than Amazon's convenience-store banner, Amazon Go, and smaller than its grocery store concept, Amazon Fresh.
The new Amazon Grocery features an assortment of grab-and-go foods. | Photo: Timothy Inklebarger
While customers shopping at Whole Foods Market are looking for natural and organic products, this new format features traditional national grocery brands and household essentials not included in Whole Foods’ natural and organic product mix.
“We’re always looking for ways to make it easier for customers to shop for groceries, whether online or in store,” Amazon spokesperson Jessica Martin said in a statement provided to CSP. “We’re testing and learning with a new grocery shopping experience with a small-format store from Amazon under the same roof as Whole Foods Market in the One Chicago building. With this new concept, customers can shop their favorite natural and organic products at Whole Foods Market and get a broader product assortment from Amazon all in one trip, saving them time and money.”
Seattle-based Amazon’s grocery and convenience-store portfolio includes Amazon.com online and approximately 50 Amazon Fresh brick-and-mortar grocery stores in California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington; 16 Amazon Go cashierless convenience stores in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Seattle; and more than 500 Whole Foods Market upscale grocery stores in North America and the United Kingdom.
Whole Foods also recently debuted its first small-format Whole Foods Market Daily Shop. The 9,101-square-foot store is located in New York City’s Lenox Hill neighborhood in the Upper East Side. It also plans to Whole Foods Market Daily Shops in the East Village’s StuyTown development and in Hell’s Kitchen, with additional New York City locations and a national rollout to follow, the company said.
That convenience-store-like format “is designed to bring the freshest, high-quality ingredients to customers with a convenience that fits their fast-paced urban lifestyles,” the company said.
This story originally appeared in RB sister publications CSP Daily News and Supermarket News. It has been modified slightly.
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