Amazon is opening its first cashier less grocery store outside of its hometown, Seattle. The new store is opening in Chicago today. Like the other stores before it, it’s open long hours from 7AM to 8PM, and it doesn’t have any checkout lines.
Now reportedly Amazon has three other Amazon Go stores, all in Seattle, that it launched between 2016 and this year. They’re each the size of a small convenience store, which is far smaller than the average US supermarket. Similar to a 7 Eleven, Amazon Go mainly sells ready-made lunches, drinks, snacks, frozen dinners, and basic groceries.
The stores use hundreds of cameras and sensors to account for what people are buying. People simply need to use their Amazon Go app to enter the store, pick up what they need, and leave. The items get charged to their Amazon account automatically as they’re exiting. The process removes the need for human cashiers and also reduces customer wait time.
Amazon has also named San Francisco as another city where it’s looking to expand. Earlier this year, Recode reported Amazon was considering expanding into six more stores in 2018, including one in Los Angeles and possibly more in Seattle.
