
Amazon to open grocery chain separate from Whole Foods - capocannoniere
https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/01/wsj-amazon-to-open-new-u-s-grocery-chain-separate-from-whole-foods
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01100011
Smart move. Whole Foods has a limited appeal. It's not just price - sometimes
people want to buy Cheetos or pizza rolls that don't taste like cardboard.

Slightly related thought: Why not design a store which allows instant
fulfillment from a wide selection of goods while taking up less ground level
space? I could see an Amazon/Walmart/etc store where you reserve the shelf
space for presentation, but the goods are actually stored on higher floors and
delivered to the customer upon checkout? Real-estate is a premium in many
markets and probably keeps out super-center style stores. If you could build
up, without having to extend retail niceties to all floors, you might make the
costs work.

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gamegoblin
Yes, I imagine a store in which you just walk around and scan QR codes on your
phone and your bagged groceries are waiting for you when you walk out (all
paid for on the app, too, so no checkout).

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ip26
How is that better? It saves you from... pushing a cart?

Not to mention, until robots can handle every variety of produce and package,
isn't the real life manifestation basically going to be a sixteen year old
dashing about in a mirror-store hidden in the back, tracing your footsteps,
picking up the things you scan, and putting them in a cart?

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Skunkleton
A few reasons:

1\. Potential for less waste through 1) people not avoiding ugly produce, 2)
not leaving refrigerated stuff on a non-refrigerated shelf, 3) leaving freezer
doors open, 4) stealing things.

2\. Less congestion in the browsing section.

3\. Better stock tracking.

4\. Easier stock management. You don't have to have people move stock between
a warehouse and a shelf.

5\. And yes, you don't have to push a cart.

There are significant drawbacks too. The biggest one I can think of is that
the fulfillment mechanism doesn't actually exist.

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knodi123
you forgot "instant checkout"

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Skunkleton
I doubt you would get that. You still have to wait for fulfillment. I guess at
least you probably wouldn't be in a line.

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jchallis
Does your business 1) work in retail and 2) have more than 2% margin?

Then Amazon is coming for you.

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eunoia
This is clever.

So I'm curious, how is Amazon able to execute so effectively in so many
different spaces? It would seem to me that any company endlessly extending
itself into new markets is doomed to lose sight of its core competencies and
eventually collapse under it's own weight.

And yet Amazon still grows, and keeps executing. How is this possible? Is the
6 page memo the magic sauce of sprawling corporate empire governance? Am I
just not understanding some fundamental tenet of business?

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nickpsecurity
They appear to have a strong focus on what customers actually want, hire
bright people to figure out how to build it, are willing to gamble on some of
it even if boss disagrees, make sure they keep whatever they build lean +
scalable, use that to be profitable at scale on low margins, and tie stuff
together as much as they can for higher satisfaction of customers and cross-
selling them.

I'm not an Amazon guy or customer. Just guessing from what I read. I am pretty
sure that lots of big businesses going cheap on or ignoring workers' advice,
investing in expensive or inflexible systems, and pretending to listen to
their customers contributes to their loss of market share to both startups
with high customer focus + flexibility and pivoting behemoths like Amazon that
emulate that.

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manav
I think the average Whole Foods has plenty of wasted space and that they could
easily start to carry products that the average consumer has to go to a normal
grocery/convenience store to buy (liquor, snacks, candy, soda, beauty etc). I
don't think it will diminish from the experience. Plenty of higher end grocery
stores do the same, even with a smaller footprint.

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anth_anm
Whole Foods already carries all that stuff.

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arthurcolle
Whole Foods doesn't carry liquor in any place I've ever lived.

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mikeyouse
The ~4 I've been to in SF all carry some liquor (usually a small end cap with
1-2 options of each variety). Maybe it's a regional thing?

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bane
Why test when you can A|B test?

