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Amazon Turns Whole Foods Into A Fulfillment Center
Courtesy of Amazon
Amazon is expanding its grocery footprint — not by building bigger stores with more shelves, but by using technology to deliver the food you don’t see stocked.
The Big Picture: Amazon is constantly working to shrink the gap between ordering something and receiving it. Integrating its Amazon Fresh grocery business and Whole Foods acquisition into its e-commerce and robotics flywheel has taken some time, but the company hopes its pilot store in Pennsylvania will demonstrate how these services come together.
Between The Shelves: The new Whole Foods in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, wants to ensure that customers leave with everything they need.
It has tablets throughout the store that allow shoppers to find items that aren’t on display.
After users make their selections, they can check out on their Amazon account by scanning a QR code.
Those orders are fulfilled by a “microfulfilment center” onsite, where autonomous “ShopBots” gather items for human workers to bag.
Shoppers then receive a text notification when their order is ready for pickup at an Amazon counter inside the store.
Checkout: The Verge notes that the new hybrid-shopping feature lets Whole Foods offer more items without the store… well… losing the Whole Foods vibe. But it’s all part of Amazon’s plan to make the upscale grocery brand a bigger part of its empire — Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel was recently named VP of Amazon’s grocery business, and Whole Foods workers will soon become Amazon employees.
In other words, the existence of both Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh may not be long for this world.
Next Run: If customers like the experience, expect Amazon to explore other types of specialty stores using the same system — from fashion and consumer products to physical media.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.