Amazon Is Shutting Down Every Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh Store. Here’s What Went Wrong.
The company will close 57 Fresh stores and 15 Amazon Go locations, converting some into Whole Foods stores.
The era of Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go is officially over. The e-commerce giant announced it’s closing all 72 locations after a decade-long experiment. Amazon will convert some locations into Whole Foods stores and plans to open more than 100 new Whole Foods locations in coming years.
The branded stores failed to deliver a distinctive customer experience with a scalable economic model, according to The Wall Street Journal. Amazon Fresh offered a more mass-market selection than Whole Foods but struggled to win customers despite high-tech shopping carts and cheaper prices. Amazon Go’s checkout-free convenience stores also never resonated on a large scale, with the company already trimming its fleet by more than half since 2023.
But Amazon physical retail isn’t completely dead. The closures come just days after Amazon won approval to open its largest-ever store in Orland Park, Illinois. Amazon is clearly betting that going bigger is better than its previous mid-sized retail experiments.
The era of Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go is officially over. The e-commerce giant announced it’s closing all 72 locations after a decade-long experiment. Amazon will convert some locations into Whole Foods stores and plans to open more than 100 new Whole Foods locations in coming years.
The branded stores failed to deliver a distinctive customer experience with a scalable economic model, according to The Wall Street Journal. Amazon Fresh offered a more mass-market selection than Whole Foods but struggled to win customers despite high-tech shopping carts and cheaper prices. Amazon Go’s checkout-free convenience stores also never resonated on a large scale, with the company already trimming its fleet by more than half since 2023.
But Amazon physical retail isn’t completely dead. The closures come just days after Amazon won approval to open its largest-ever store in Orland Park, Illinois. Amazon is clearly betting that going bigger is better than its previous mid-sized retail experiments.
