Amazon to introduce grocery store concept with smart carts

Technology giant Amazon has announced it will open a supermarket with high tech shopping carts that allow customers to skip checkout lines. 

The 35,000 square foot grocery store, based in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, is called Amazon Fresh. It will be the first store to open out of seven confirmed cites in southern California and greater Chicago. 

“We’re announcing our first Amazon Fresh grocery store. It’s a new grocery store designed to offer a seamless shopping experience whether customers are shopping in-store or online,” Jeff Helbling, vice president of Amazon Fresh stores, said in an interview.

“With this new store, we’ve taken our decades of operations experience at Amazon to deliver consistently low prices for everyone and free same-day grocery delivery for Prime members.”

The new supermarket will debut the Dash Cart, a small grocery cart that is capable of tracking shoppers’ items, enabling them to skip the checkout line. The carts also feature Echo Show devices to ask Alexa where various items are located in the shop. 

The smart cart enables shoppers to forgo the store’s cashiers, instead using technology to discern purchases, bill a nominated credit card, and leave through a designated lane. 

A service counter will provide customers with a place to pick up orders from Amazon’s online shop, and to complete returns without having to package and resend the items themselves. 

The new grocery store serves as an expansion of the company’s organic Whole Foods chain, which it acquired for $13.7 billion in 2017. However, Amazon Fresh will stock well-known brands and a range of fresh produce, meat and seafood.