Amazon To Eventually Open As Many As 2,000 Grocery Stores

I'm going to make a prediction. I am going to say that, after the twenty store pilot program fails miserably, Amazon will scrap this whole plan. That may not be a popular opinion, but that's what I think is going to happen. How do you think this is all going to go down?

Earlier this month, all-powerful “sources familiar with the matter” claimed that Amazon was on the verge of opening bricks-and-mortar convenience stores and offering curbside pickup. Now, a new report indicates that the e-tailer plans to start small, opening 20 physical grocery stores over the next two years, but ultimately expects to have thousands of stores nationwide. Business Insider, citing documents from Amazon, reports that the e-commerce giant will open up to 2,000 grocery store locations over the next decade as part of its plan to enter the physical grocery market.

it'll fail miserably but if it doesn't i feel bad for all the smaller grocery store chains.. it's just going to turn into a brawl between walmart and amazon.

I think this has a great potential of working, even in larger cities if you are a weekly grocery shopper.
Let me explain. Some people limit their food related shopping to once a week, instead of going out shopping whenever they need. it can take close to 2 hours to do grocery shopping if you do it in a 1 time per week style. so if you are shopping once a week, being able to use an automated buy-me list for a store (amazon) and just picking the items up should save a bunch of time.
By doing in-store purchasing using an in store price scanner can save like 30min off traditional food shopping. Stop&shop, hannifords and I think shaws has these.
I think that the best solution for once-a-week shoppers would be an automated online buy-me list (with amazon kitchen hand scanner thing), and just hand picking vegetables in-store.

However, it may be more effective to do grocery shopping every 3 days so you have less items to refrigerate. This way, your meats are not frozen for long periods of time, you get better taste and you can buy a smaller fridge.
I think this method of shopping is slowly becoming the norm.

All Amazon has to do is undercut on price, and the fact that they are so huge means they can probably negotiate big deals that little guys can't with vendors just like Walmart does.

Amazon also likely has a culture and systems in place to lower operating costs more than competitors like Krogers/Randals/etc, which they can implement just as well in a "warehouse grocery store" as they can their other warehouses.

After all, much of the cost of groceries is just the logistics of keeping shelves stocked, figuring out what people want to keep enough on hand, transporting it from A to B, etc. Amazon is good at that.

They also already have "Amazon pantry" up and running, so each grocery store can likely serve as the warehouse for that region as well. So you have one in Houston, and not only can people nearby shop there, but it'll be the hub to service the entire Houston area for shipping food as well.

The problem though is that Amazon is getting too big for its own good, and you need competition in the marketplace.

If you have Trader Joes in your area, this seems like a logical competition point..somewhere between them and whole foods. I don't think these places will try to go up against the Stop & Shop's or Winn-Dixie's of the world, then you get into...The Grocery Mafia. (Look it up, it's a *THING*..)

Anyone that knows grocery stores knows that they have RAZOR THIN profit margins. While that concept in general is up Amazon's alley, it is not easy to enter. I believe it will fail miserably.

I think out of all the companies to try, amazon has a fair shot at succeeding. I give them a current chance of 33%

Walmart already has their small 'neighborhood market' stores everywhere.

This sounds like a terrible idea. What's going to set these stores apart from existing stores? Why does Amazon need physical pickup locations? Don't they practically run the USPS at this point?

sirmonkey1985 said:

it'll fail miserably but if it doesn't i feel bad for all the smaller grocery store chains.. it's just going to turn into a brawl between walmart and amazon.

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I would love to see the stance of Ali Baba on this then!

They should enter the beef business.. maybe they can make that cheaper.

Amazon has always been successful because they cut out a lot of the operational costs from their business plan. Adding twenty brick and mortar stores, say 90-100 employees to run these stores, and having to negotiate all of those deals to stock the store... it's unimaginable that they have a document at Amazon HQ that shows anything but a red number circled and underlined.

When shopping online pricing at is at least close to what I can get a the local store; then I'm all over it.
But I have looked at pricing on Amazon Pantry; much higher than what I can buy locally.

I hope this is successful, but only because I'm fairly sure the only way this will be successful is if they can undercut on everything and still pay employees well enough to keep them. Hell, I'd even spend a little more, if I knew it was to support full time employees with real benefits instead of corporate cogs that are trained how to supplement their part time pittance of a wage with government program funds.

Cyraxx said:

Anyone that knows grocery stores knows that they have RAZOR THIN profit margins. While that concept in general is up Amazon's alley, it is not easy to enter. I believe it will fail miserably.

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I expect its a foot in the door for some aspect of delivery. Also probably meant to make local stores nervous and regret tagging sales tax on them. Excuse them from state sales tax and I bet they will leave.

love it, maybe we can get in-store-pickups too.

Bezos recently said he wants Amazon to fail more often. The Fire Phone did not discourage him.

People are too lazy to shop for groceries so they go to Mcdonalds instead.