Amazon to reportedly expand its presence in the grocery industry with convenience stores

Shawn Knight

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Amazon is planning to expand its presence in the grocery business with a new effort known internally as Project Como.

Sources familiar with the plans tell The Wall Street Journal that Amazon is looking to build small brick-and-mortar convenience stores that would stock common perishable items like milk, produce and meats.

What’s more, Amazon may be just weeks away from opening a drive-up grocery store in its hometown of Seattle in which orders placed ahead of time online will be brought out and loaded into customers’ vehicles. The company is said to be developing technology to read license plates that would be used to speed up wait times.

The drive-up grocery store will – at least, initially – be limited to subscribers of Amazon’s Fresh subscription service. Perhaps in preparation for the upcoming store, Amazon just last week eliminated the $299 annual price of Fresh in favor of a $15 per month fee for standard Prime members.

Nobody has yet cracked the online grocery / delivery puzzle. According to Morgan Stanley Research, groceries account for nearly 20 percent of consumer spending yet online grocery purchases make up just two percent of grocery sales in the US.

There’s plenty of money to be made as the Food Marketing Institute says the average household makes more than one-and-a-half grocery store visits each week, spending an average of $107 in the process. Getting goods to online shoppers, however, is tricky as some food must be kept cold. Further complicating the matter are tight delivery windows as couriers can’t simply leave several bags of food sitting on your porch if you aren’t home.

Amazon declined to comment, the Journal said.

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If it Amazon's brick & mortar stores can't compete against the established stores in price, quality and convenience, they may as well call their attempt Project Coma.
 
If it Amazon's brick & mortar stores can't compete against the established stores in price, quality and convenience, they may as well call their attempt Project Coma.

Well said! Amazon simply does not have the experience and knowledge to operate on the direct retail level. As one that has interviewed with them and experienced first hand some of the *****s that are in top management, I am a bit surprised they continue to last. As I noticed, they have the approach that "if we will it, it will happen" and they still haven't learned that their name alone isn't going to be nearly enough. Just look at the recent missteps of Walmart that chose to ignore the lessons learned from Sears departure from the value of the Craftsman brand and their long standing motto "Satisfaction Guaranteed". Amazon has even put into place a number of things to discourage customers from returning faulty merchandise and they ignore it when a consumer raises the red flag on a dishonest or disreputable vendor. I have one vendor that continues to write to me weekly promising they will ship a replacement AFTER I remove my poor evaluation of their product. Where is Amazon then????
 
Well said! Amazon simply does not have the experience and knowledge to operate on the direct retail level. As one that has interviewed with them and experienced first hand some of the *****s that are in top management, I am a bit surprised they continue to last. As I noticed, they have the approach that "if we will it, it will happen" and they still haven't learned that their name alone isn't going to be nearly enough. Just look at the recent missteps of Walmart that chose to ignore the lessons learned from Sears departure from the value of the Craftsman brand and their long standing motto "Satisfaction Guaranteed". Amazon has even put into place a number of things to discourage customers from returning faulty merchandise and they ignore it when a consumer raises the red flag on a dishonest or disreputable vendor. I have one vendor that continues to write to me weekly promising they will ship a replacement AFTER I remove my poor evaluation of their product. Where is Amazon then????
I really ought to pay more attention to my grammar before zapping the 'post button'. "If it Amazon's"? I ask you... I never noticed it until I read your reply. Thanks.
 
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