Amazon Is Closing All 72 Of Its Supermarkets — Here's The Chain Taking Their Place

Amazon recently announced that it will be closing all 72 of its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh grocery store locations in the immediate future — most will be gone by next month. "While we've seen encouraging signals in our Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, we haven't yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion," Amazon stated.

If you'll recall, these Amazon brick-and-mortar grocery stores received a lot of attention for allowing customers to place items in their cart, then walk out without having to go through a traditional check-out line. It was later discovered that the system wasn't fully powered with artificial intelligence, as was touted, but rather required a team of workers in India to scrutinize on video what you had purchased. So much for the technology of the future.

While the grocery store chain could never quite gain its footing among all the established competition in that sector, that doesn't mean Amazon has given up on groceries altogether. That's because some of those physical stores will be converted into Whole Foods Markets instead, which is another Amazon-owned brand. Whole Foods Market is more of a time-tested operation that probably won't struggle as much as Amazon's physical stores seemed to have, but Amazon's not getting out of the grocery game entirely.

With the end of an era, Amazon is shifting its focus to improving its grocery delivery services so that particular component of its grocery business remains intact. While you can already order your groceries from partner stores on its platform, the company's going to add more markets to its same-day delivery service. The company also has a relatively new service called Amazon Now that aims to deliver household essentials and fresh food within 30 minutes (think of it like a deliverable convenience store) in cities like Seattle and Philadelphia. Those are currently in testing phases.

The company also announced on AmazonNews that it's exploring the idea of a "supercenter physical retail concept," which would involve a brick-and-mortar space that sells everything from groceries to merchandise (probably along the lines of a Walmart, Meijer, or Target). In the meantime, you can say goodbye to those somewhat menacing Amazon Fresh buildings, and don't be surprised when you see more Whole Foods Markets take their place. Hey, if it matters, at least those with a Prime membership will get perks there.