Amazon Go Stores Are Threatening to Eat Your Convenience Store’s Lunch & Drink Their Big Gulp, Too

Amazon Go Stores Are Threatening to Eat Your Convenience Store’s Lunch & Drink Their Big Gulp, Too

Thinking about stopping at the convenience store to grab a snack on the run, or pick-up a half gallon on the way home? Well, in the near future that experience is going to transform — complete with no cashier.

Bloomberg reported last week that “Amazon.com Inc. is considering a plan to open as many as 3,000 new AmazonGo cashierless stores in the next few years, according to people familiar with matter, an aggressive and costly expansion that would threaten convenience chains like 7-Eleven Inc., quick-service sandwich shops like Subway and Panera Bread, and mom-and-pop pizzerias and taco trucks.”

The store works off an app and microsensors on products and the shopping bag -- walk in and walk out. 

How fast will the new stores be open? There could be 3,000 by 2021 says Forbes. To put the expansion in context, Cumberland Farms has 600 stores and 7-Eleven has 60,000 franchised stores around the world.

SEE VIDEO BELOW OF THE FIRST AMAZON GO STORE

“I think [most importantly] is what we can learn from by looking at Amazon Go,” said Business Innovation Factory’s Saul Kaplan in an interview on GoLocal LIVE’s Business Monday.

”They try to solve a customer's problems. If it works, do more of it; if it doesn't, use the technology in a different way -- and Amazon's Jeff Bezos takes that to heart,” said Kaplan.

Amazon is already dominating retail. The company by the end of 2018 is expected to capture nearly half of the U.S. e-commerce market according to eMarketer.

How big is the potential market for Amazon Go to disrupt? According to the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS), the U.S. convenience store industry has 154,000 stores nationwide selling fuel, food, and merchandise. “It serves 160 million customers daily—half of the U.S. population—and has sales that are 10.8% of total U.S. retail and foodservice sales.”

 

amazon go's first checkout-free grocery store opens in Seattle from designboom on Vimeo.