I'm really bummed about this! I wanted to be able to just go in a store and grab a juice or an apple and then leave the store. I don't live in NYC or San Fran or Seattle, but I'd hoped these stores would spread.
We have them in London and they are pretty convenient.
It's amazing, I love it.
In small enough groups where there is a good sense of community it’s amazing what can work.
So, basically something a vending machine could provide?
We've had those since like the '50s, except without computer vision, user tracking and machine learning.
I don't know why Amazon was trying to reinvent the wheel here in the most expensive way possible.
Maybe the largest extra expense of vending machines is that store refrigerators are _deeper_ which means they need to be restocked less, or that the most popular products can take up less 'slots' because the total number of drinks per slots is larger.
They don't want to fiddle around with a payment system that might reject their five dollar bill for being too wrinkled, or fail to accurately read their card, just to be served a bruised apple at the end of it.
Think about other even more perishable items, like seafood. Do you want a fish vending machine? Or do you want to be able to examine your food before you decide to purchase it?
Vending machines work well for nonperishables. Grocery stores work well for perishable items.
Grocery stores have a massive time cost for picking up your items, so it makes sense to get a lot of things at once, which only compounds the waiting problem for other customers.
Amazon's solution gets rid of that time cost. The only part you have to worry about is the trouble of getting in the door, and that takes the same amount of time no matter how many items people are buying. The barrier to entry would be being technologically sophisticated enough to download an app on your phone. Some people don't want to do that, and they're free to shop at other stores.
The Amazon Go stores aren't expensive over-engineered vending machines. There's still a time cost to using a vending machine. The innovative part is saving people time.