To answer some easy questions: >> The idea the author floats that this type of place could ever be open with no staff present is ludicrous. No on has ever sai

To answer some easy questions: >> The idea the author floats that this type of place could ever be open with no staff present is ludicrous. No on has ever said the store will have no staff present. At the very, very basics: it sells alcohol and is in the United States. It has staff present. Not to mention security, stocking, etc. The value proposition is a lower margin cost and better customer experience, not zero staff. >> The store has a bunch of ready-to-eat and semi-prepared bundles that hit a very narrow niche in the grocery market. There are a few pre-packaged name-brand products, but everything is arranged in a highly regimented manner, and the store is very small. It's revealing to note what's missing: any fresh produce whatsoever. What does this have to do with the store's ability to scale? How does pre-packaged food (perishable) differ from fresh produce (perishable) if they decide to stock produce? Are you worried about Amazon's ability to handle logistics? An initial test location in a limited space (this is downtown Seattle) has to have customers and they identified pre-packaged food and consumable items like wine as what the customers in the area wanted, not a scaled down Whole Foods. >> And what about the software itself? Do the cameras keep track of the inventory correctly? What if a customer puts a product back down in the wrong place? How much awareness does the software actually have? Is it tracking your phone or you? Does it attempt to deal with scams (can you bring an empty boxed meal kit into the store, replace a new one from the shelf with the empty, and then walk out)? The store has been in private beta to thousands of Amazon employees for over a year. It's safe to assume they're confident in their technology. Other tech sites have been given permission to try and trick the software. They failed. >> Now, I don't think Amazon is really thinking that sort of thing is imminent, or that they are actually going to make money from this store. This is a vanity experiment, nothing more. They are getting lots of free advertising from a credulous press, and that's plenty sufficient for them. Even if this were true, you fail to make the case here.