Amazon announced Friday that it’s permanently closing eight of its 29 Amazon Go convenience stores that allow customers to purchase products without being checked out by a cashier or using a self-checkout station.
The impacted stores are in high-crime blue cities: Seattle, New York City, and San Francisco.
Amazon is permanently closing eight of its 29 Amazon Go convenience stores in Seattle, New York City, and San Francisco.
— DailyNoah.com (@DailyNoahNews) March 8, 2023
GeekWire noted:
The two impacted stores in Seattle are located downtown, in the Macy’s Building at 3rd Avenue and Pine Street, and at 4th Avenue and Pike Street. Both stores have been closed for some time, according to Amazon, and are located in a part of downtown that has been especially troubled by crime and open-air drug use.
Two stores in New York City and four in San Francisco will also close. The affected stores will continue to operate until April 1.
“Like any physical retailer, we periodically assess our portfolio of stores and make optimization decisions along the way,” an Amazon spokesperson said.
“We remain committed to the Amazon Go format, operate more than 20 Amazon Go stores across the U.S., and will continue to learn which locations and features resonate most with customers as we keep evolving our Amazon Go stores.”
While Amazon said the closures relate to ‘cost-cutting,’ could skyrocketing crime be the real reason the company is closing the stores?
Amazon has announced it will be closing several grocery stores in high crime cities like NYC, Seattle and San Francisco, but claims the measure is related to “cost-cutting”.https://t.co/oNlIcr07O7
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) March 8, 2023
CNN Business described how Amazon Go stores have failed to meet expectations:
The stores were supposed to offer benefits for both customers and the company. The Amazon Go stores allowed for maximum convenience: customers can shop for the items they want and then walk past scanners which register their purchases without any kind of checkout or scanning of items required. They also eliminated the need for staff positions, helping Amazon’s bottom line.
Amazon debuted the Go store in Seattle in 2016. It hailed the stores as the future of shopping, especially for convenience stores in busy downtowns of major cities. At one point Amazon expected there to be hundreds if not thousands of the stores nationwide, according to published reports that were never confirmed by the company. But they never lived up to those expectations.
Amazon isn’t the only major company to close stores in high-crime cities in recent weeks.
Walmart announced the closure of its final two stores in Portland, Oregon.
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