Inside Amazon's Fresh grocery banner
Three years after it acquired Whole Foods Market, Amazon is planning to disrupt the grocery industry once again, this time with innovation not seen in any traditional food retailer--ever.
After months of speculation, the Seattle-based company has opened its first stand-alone supermarket banner: a 35,000-square-foot, digitally enhanced store in Woodland Hills, California, called Fresh. The Fresh store opened Thursday to a select group of customers before it opens widely to the public in the coming weeks; an exact date will be announced later.
The Fresh banner is not an offshoot of Whole Foods, nor does it look like one of those checkout-less Amazon Go stores that have been popping up in urban areas across the United States, nor does it look like the 365 banner that Amazon scrapped last year.
Fresh has full-service meat, seafood, deli and bakery departments.
The new Amazon Fresh supermarket takes elements of all of those concepts--micro-fulfillment, contactless features, a curated assortment of premium and conventional products, and highly personalized service--and melds them into one innovative store that offers something for every type of food shopper.
"The Amazon Fresh grocery store is designed from the ground up to offer a seamless grocery shopping experience, whether customers are shopping in-store or online," said Jeff Helbling, VP of Amazon Fresh stores. "We’ve taken our decades of operations experience to deliver consistently low prices for all, and free same-day delivery for Prime members."
ASSORTMENT
Consumers shopping Amazon Fresh will find a wide assortment of national brands and high-quality produce, meat and seafood, the company said. Though Helbling declined to offer SKU specifics, he said the assortment would consist of "all the items you'd expect to see in a full-service grocery store," including national, private and local brands. The company is launching at least two exclusive private label brands at Fresh stores: Fresh and Cursive.
"Our Fresh brand offers great value on things like meat, seafood and bakery items. For example, we will offer our Fresh brand, natural whole chicken with no added hormones, for 99 cents," Helbling said. "And our new Cursive brand is an exclusive wine brand to Amazon. It offers a selection of reds and whites, also with terrific value."
Wait! There's more. Click here to learn about Amazon's Fresh grocery banner including expansion plans, in-store tech and pricing. Our sister publication Progressive Grocer has the full story.