4 ms·

I doubt they'll be able to compete on costs, on the retail front Amazon Go style stores are certainly the future. Legacy retailers (and grocers) are simply too

I doubt they'll be able to compete on costs, on the retail front Amazon Go style stores are certainly the future. Legacy retailers (and grocers) are simply too labor heavy and their large retail footprint will come back to bite them. Even if last mile delivery has a driver, operational costs will be far lower.

rsynnott 8y ago
My local Tesco (I apologise for all the Tesco references; they seem to have totally taken over my area of Dublin) is a small urban supermarket with eight automated checkouts, and typically one employee on a manual checkout for people who want to buy alcohol and cigarettes, or who refuse to deal with the machines. At peak times maybe two or three employees, but one is normal. Big suburban supermarkets have a bunch of automatic checkouts, plus scanners for shoppers to take with them and self-checkout as they put their purchases in the trolley. Amazon Go type shops may be _slightly_ more labour efficient (if they work) but there's no reason the big chains can't just do that, too. Weirdly, when I was in San Francisco recently, I went to a Whole Foods (an Amazon owned supermarket). It didn't have automated checkouts at all! I'm unconvinced that Amazon is actually a leader in automated supermarkets. RE the large real estate footprint, that's usually leased (at least here). As demand for physical supermarkets drops, they can just stop renewing leases.
Kephael 8y ago
I've found checking out even with automated checkout to be a slow and a poor user experience. Kroger stores in Seattle illustrate this very well, waiting in line for 8 minutes just to pay isn't fun. Removing everything from the cart, scanning it, and putting it back is silly. I really can't imagine younger people going to physical grocery stores in the future. Walmart owns the majority of its store locations.

rsynnott 8y ago

My local Tesco (I apologise for all the Tesco references; they seem to have totally taken over my area of Dublin) is a small urban supermarket with eight automated checkouts, and typically one employee on a manual checkout for people who want to buy alcohol and cigarettes, or who refuse to deal with the machines. At peak times maybe two or three employees, but one is normal. Big suburban supermarkets have a bunch of automatic checkouts, plus scanners for shoppers to take with them and self-checkout as they put their purchases in the trolley. Amazon Go type shops may be _slightly_ more labour efficient (if they work) but there's no reason the big chains can't just do that, too. Weirdly, when I was in San Francisco recently, I went to a Whole Foods (an Amazon owned supermarket). It didn't have automated checkouts at all! I'm unconvinced that Amazon is actually a leader in automated supermarkets. RE the large real estate footprint, that's usually leased (at least here). As demand for physical supermarkets drops, they can just stop renewing leases.

Kephael 8y ago

I've found checking out even with automated checkout to be a slow and a poor user experience. Kroger stores in Seattle illustrate this very well, waiting in line for 8 minutes just to pay isn't fun. Removing everything from the cart, scanning it, and putting it back is silly. I really can't imagine younger people going to physical grocery stores in the future. Walmart owns the majority of its store locations.