Amazon's latest grocery store concept opens, with high-tech carts | Hacker News Reader

Amazon's latest grocery store concept opens, with high-tech carts

reuters.com

25 pointsawb22 comments

As great as its image, in my view Whole Foods just isn't that great of a grocery store.

They were out of ground pork the other day and the staff at the butcher counter insisted they weren't allowed to grind more pork, despite it being on display. Bizarre.

They are regularly out of things just beyond the norm, like polenta.

Seems less like a grocery store for normal people and more of a spot for yuppies to buy $8 kombucha or whatever. Blows my mind.

Why can't we have HEB in California?

Speaking of HEB, I’m in the hunt for some black market mixla tortillas up in Virginia. (Recently relocated from Houston)

Try Trader Joe’s - they have similar corn & flour tortillas under their house brand.

> Why can't we have HEB in California?

I think most grocery companies are really food logistics companies under the hood. Expanding requires building out the logistics.

With that in mind, the answer seems to be "We can't have an HEB in California because there's a bunch of AZ and NM between Texas and California".

If you want something HEB-like, there's always Safeway or Sprouts.

>Seems less like a grocery store for normal people and more of a spot for yuppies to buy $8 kombucha or whatever. Blows my mind.

Is that not what it's always been? Even before Amazon bought them? It's pretty much a meme at this point.

I don’t buy kombucha but I’m vegan and since Amazon bought it the quality and diversity of the products i used to get has gone down, luckily local supermarket chains seem to have noticed and started to get more variety of those products since.

I like Whole Foods but a good number of the vegan products I buy are available cheaper at Target now, esp frozen. So I make the rounds... Safeway, Sprouts, a local gourmet shop, etc.

I don’t like what Amazon has done to the selection, and they seem out of things more often these days. Guessing it’s a mix of supply chain issues and contractual sourcing pressure that keeps some products out of stock because Amazon is very selective on product mix, pricing and delivery volumes. When you ask in the stores, they never seem to know. Peculiarly, they’ve been out of dry chickpeas a lot, recently.

The stores can be very different from location to location. The Park City store looks nice but is horrible. Sedona, Reno and Lafayette are great, IMO. Etc.

In my experience [pre-covid, city], Whole Foods was just a place to pick up lunch then walk back to your tech office tower or hipster coworking space.

I don't see much value in it other than either an Amazon Fresh staging point or picking up lunch and a sparkling water - in general I don't even see people using carts. At best a basket, typical they just carry a beverage in one hand and a paper box of whatever they got from the hot/cold bar with the other.

Wholefoods is mostly overpriced, but good for niche items like high quality milk or Strauss ice cream. California has TJ, costco, and more of all else.

Anyway, it's an upscale grocery store and at least in my opinion is better than Gelsons. Although again, I only go there for like 2 items.

Awesome article about "high-tech carts"... with no picture of the cart

Yeah, I want to see the cart now also! It is like clickbait without the reward at the end :(

https://www.amazon.com/b?node=21289116011

You sign in by holding your phone with the Amazon app (QR code) up to a camera. Then scan every item as you place it in the cart. It has some load sensors so that it can weigh items that are sold by weight.

Looks like making them pay a $15 minimum wage only expedited their constant desire to remove people from the equation.

They were making these moves regardless. Do you have any data that says that a higher minimum wage expedited it?

Do you have any data that says it did not?

In general, it's important to figure out this question because

A) People who believe there should be a higher minimum wage tend to believe it has zero impact on businesses' likelihood of cutting jobs

WHEREAS

B) People who believe there should be a free market tend to believe that having a minimum wage reduces jobs

I've never seen either party show Good Data and Stats to prove their point

So if you're asking him for data (a good question), you should also be willing to show data

He made a positive claim, so the onus is on him to prove it's true. The burden of proof isn't symmetrical. It is much harder to prove a negative.

There is a rumor that one of these markets is opening soon near where I live. I’d love to shop and not wait in a line. I’ve been enjoying the Aldi’s that’s near me. Fast lines and good prices. They are pretty good keeping things in stock too.

well, at least they're not making customers work for them like in the "self-checkout" stations that most of grocery stores have adapted to.

If the part of shopping where I transfer my goods from my cart into my bag is “work”, then ought the part where I transfer goods from the shelf into my cart also be considered work?

IOW haven’t grocers been making the customer work for them ever since the creation of the supermarket —— long before self-checkout —— based on your definition of work?

This is true. However, don't forget subscribing to the rest of the automobile culture: license, car, registration, driving to the store, parking, tickets, fuel, etc. These are really costs born by the consumer. Now they are also asking you to bring your own bags, pack your own bags, subscribe as a member to "save" (be monitored), and in some cases shop in specific hours to avoid the elderly due to COVID.

One of the most interesting things about living outside of western societies has been wet markets with zero accessibility for cars but great accessibility for walking, cycling and motorbikes. They are much friendlier and tend to have more stores with the same produce but different supply chains, which leads to more competition, greater variety and friendly personal service.

If you watch the video of it, it looks like this is just a rolling self checkout machine. So you basically self checkout with each item as you put it in the cart.

Giant in the mid-Atlantic has had this sort of experience for well over a decade I want to say? You pick up a scanner and scan your shop card, then you scan & bag your items as you shop and self-checkout at the end. Between that and grocery delivery I feel like there’s a lesson about timing & product in here somewhere.

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