The Grocery Store of the Future
The produce section of the new Amazon Fresh grocery store.
There’s a line to get inside the Amazon Fresh store. Black t-shirt clad employees survey the crowd like bouncers at a club. But those in line are waiting for something much cooler: the smart cart. One of the employees tries to talk me out of it.
Customers line up for a smart cart.
“It might be fifteen, twenty minutes,” she warns as I join the line. “If you want a regular cart, you can go in now.”
I tell her I’ll wait. I want the full Amazon Fresh experience. Opened last month in the Irvine Marketplace, Amazon Fresh resides in the massive former Babys R Us store space and provides both online order fulfillment and direct sales to Amazon customers. The second of its kind (the first opened in Woodland Hills in September), the Amazon Fresh concept is strange. Why would Amazon launch its own grocery store chain after buying Whole Foods for $13.7 billion just 3 years ago? Why would Amazon want customers getting in the way of harried employees organizing deliveries? And, most importantly, why does Amazon want to get its customers off the couch and into brick and mortar?
When I make it to the front of the line, an employee shows me the smart cart ropes: how to sign in (swipe right on the top bar in the Amazon app and select “Fresh-In-Store” to scan a barcode), where to put the items (in paper bags already placed in the cart), what the screen does when an item is placed inside (he demonstrates with Tic Tacs), and how to remove an item (you remove it). I express my genuine amazement with the functionality of the cart and ask him why Amazon would launch a new line of grocery stores when it already owns an entire grocery chain.
“They want a monopoly,” he says, before putting his index finger over his mask in a “shhh” gesture.
As I make my way up and down the neatly organized aisles, I get a strong monopoly vibe. If you need a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and a bag of Funions, this is the place to shop. If you need to pick up items from Whole Foods, Gelsons, and Albertsons, come here instead. Amazon Fresh brings hi-brow and low-brow together. If you long for Snackwell cookies, Carvel ice cream cakes, and other rarities, this is where you go. It has fresh produce. It has Champagne. It has a sushi bar. It has items that are out of stock on the Amazon app.
The high tech smart cart has a low tech feature: the purse hook.
It. Has. Everything.
As I round the first aisle I realize there is no space for a shopper to put a purse in the cart. And then I see the feature that makes me fall in love with Amazon Fresh. The smart cart is brilliantly designed in many ways: cup holder (not so useful when we’re all wearing masks), a screen with a list of previous Amazon purchases and the aisles where you can buy them again, and of course, sensors that detect any new item and immediately add its price to your order total with a chipper little “ding.” The feature that goes beyond technology and into understanding customer behavior is the purse hook. I’m certain there is another word for it, but that is precisely what it is: a hook cleverly placed out of the way so that you don’t have to decide if you want your bag or your groceries to sit in the top compartment of a traditional cart. This feature speaks to how thoughtfully Amazon considered the entire grocery shopping experience, at least up to the awkward check out.
Despite the fun, there are some downsides to shopping at Amazon Fresh.
Firstly, we amateur shoppers are in the way. The employees are the professional shoppers. As they rush around filling customers’ orders, they must detest shoppers like me, standing stupefied in the middle of an aisle because Goldfish crackers now come in a Vanilla Cupcake flavor. I only witness exceedingly polite employees, dashing about but not frantic, as they excuse themselves when I get in their way. To shop at Amazon Fresh is to get in someone’s way, because we’ve been invited to play in someone else’s workplace.
The large premade foods section includes a sushi bar with plenty of fresh options.
Secondly, the smart carts are not so smart when it comes to maneuvering. Especially when we are all trying to give each other appropriate Covid-safe distance, the heavy carts move forward or back, but turn only with a wide radius. My go to move of picking up the entire card and moving it to the side to let someone else pass is a no go with the hefty smart cart.
Finally, there is an awareness that this is yet another data mining operation. I know I’m handing over troves of information as I stroll the aisles. Someone knows that those Vanilla Cupcake flavored Goldfish crackers stopped me in my tracks. Will there be an ad in my Amazon app for them tomorrow?
Before I check out, I want to see how the smart cart handles an alcohol purchase, so I place a bottle of sparkling wine into the cart (“ding!”) and see the cart’s lights change from white to blue. I approach the Express line for purchases of 15 or fewer items. I’m told I get to go through the smart cart check out over by the green flooring where someone waves to me.
“I assume you’re over 21?” she asks in a tone that suggests she still gets carded.
“I am,” I say, in a tone that suggests I haven’t been carded in a long time.
“Check over your order total and press the button when you’re done.”
This part feels very much like shopping in the present, not the future. It’s just a regular check out. And then we take a step that makes it clear that Amazon Fresh did not take the check out process into their shopper experience considerations.
“You can’t take the smart cart outside. Would you like a regular cart for your groceries?”
These Starbucks bottled drinks were out of stock on the Amazon app but available in the store.
I hesitate. I can certainly carry two bags to the car. Then she warns me that another shopper’s bag broke and suggests the regular cart again.
I agree to take it, and walk out to my car with the cart of today, not the cart of tomorrow. In the parking lot, I pass the glass shards and milky coffee left over from the unlucky shopper’s broken bag incident. Loading the groceries into my car feels very much like any other grocery haul, despite being brought to me by Amazon Fresh.
Amazon changed how we shop. Online purchases with free shipping quickly went from a luxury to an expectation. So after all that careful work reshaping customers’ shopping habits, Amazon clearly wants us to head back to the stores. And they’ve done a lot to make the trip entertaining.
But if your need isn’t urgent, don’t bother changing out of your PJs. You can always find it online.
Amazon Fresh is located in the Irvine Marketplace: 13672 Jamboree Road, Irvine