Three grocery stores in Arlington Heights, each with a different story: One just closed, another is being revamped amid ownership change, while the third is in limbo.

Signs for a long-rumored Amazon Fresh grocery store at the Town & Country Shopping Center came down almost as quickly as they went up, leaving shoppers wondering whether the e-commerce giant's brick-and-mortar supermarket ever is coming to town.

Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with “Just Walk Out” technology, first reported by The Information Tuesday. The company’s senior vice president of grocery stores says they’re moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with.

Instead, Amazon is moving towards Dash Carts, a scanner and screen that’s embedded in your shopping cart, allowing you to checkout as you shop. These offer a more reliable solution than Just Walk Out. Amazon Fresh stores will also feature self check out counters from now on, for people who aren’t Amazon members.

“We’re rolling out Amazon Dash Cart, our smart-shopping carts,” said an Amazon spokesperson to Gizmodo. Amazon confirmed this feature is replacing its Just Walk Out technology in existing stores.

According to The Information, 700 out of 1,000 Just Walk Out sales required human reviewers as of 2022. This widely missed Amazon’s internal goals of reaching less than 50 reviews per 1,000 sales. Amazon called this characterization inaccurate, and disputes how many purchases require reviews.

polster wrote:Amazon Fresh is moving away from a feature of its grocery stores where customers could skip checkout altogether.

Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with “Just Walk Out” technology, first reported by The Information Tuesday. The company’s senior vice president of grocery stores says they’re moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with.

Instead, Amazon is moving towards Dash Carts, a scanner and screen that’s embedded in your shopping cart, allowing you to checkout as you shop. These offer a more reliable solution than Just Walk Out. Amazon Fresh stores will also feature self check out counters from now on, for people who aren’t Amazon members.

“We’re rolling out Amazon Dash Cart, our smart-shopping carts,” said an Amazon spokesperson to Gizmodo. Amazon confirmed this feature is replacing its Just Walk Out technology in existing stores.

According to The Information, 700 out of 1,000 Just Walk Out sales required human reviewers as of 2022. This widely missed Amazon’s internal goals of reaching less than 50 reviews per 1,000 sales. Amazon called this characterization inaccurate, and disputes how many purchases require reviews.

https://gizmodo.com/amazon-reportedly-d ... 1851381116

Amazon said it is removing the technology at US Amazon Fresh grocery stores which allows customers to pay for their groceries without waiting in line for a cashier or using a self-checkout machine. Instead, Amazon said it’s replacing it with Dash Cart at its more than 40 locations, a “smart shopping cart” which allows shoppers to scan groceries, link to online shopping lists and check out their groceries. The company has been testing Dash Carts at some Fresh and Whole Foods locations in the past.

Customers just haven’t bought into cashier-less technology, especially in grocery stores where they purchase larger quantities and face extra tasks such as weighing produce. Amazon says the checkout technology may be more seamless in smaller stores – that could include the Amazon Go convenience stores.
In a statement, Amazon said it will continue using the Just Walk Out technology in Amazon Go stores, at smaller format Fresh stores in the UK, and third-party locations such as certain sports stadiums and college campuses. Amazon had used roughly 1,000 humans in India, according to some news reports, to help monitor accurate checkouts. The company told CNN it’s “reducing the number of human reviews” while developing the “Just Walk Out” technology. Amazon said besides data associates’ main role in working on the underlying technology, they also “validate a small minority” of shopping visits.

Customers entered Fresh stores using Amazon One palm recognition, the app or a credit or debit card. Amazon said “sensors, cameras, and deep learning tools” caught what customers took off the shelf, automatically charging them.

Amazon says it is also installing self-checkout kiosks and assisted checkout options at Fresh locations once they’ve transitioned to using Dash Cart.
The tech giant opened its first Amazon Fresh store in 2020, and has more than 40 locations across the US. After Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017, it added cashier-less checkout in those stores as well.
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In 2021, Amazon eliminated checkout lines in a full-sized, 25,000-square-foot Amazon fresh store in Washington state, and announced it was ramping up openings of the stores. But Amazon Fresh has faced setbacks since it debuted, including challenges getting shoppers to buy groceries in its Amazon Fresh grocery stores, and it laid off workers.

Starting in 2023, the company said it was pausing Amazon Fresh store expansions.

“We’re doing a fair bit of experimentation today in those stores to try to find a format that we think resonates with customers,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in February 2023. “We’ve decided over the last year or so that we’re not going to expand the physical Fresh [stores] until we have that equation.”

In response, Amazon has redesigned Fresh stores in Chicago and Southern California. For example, in two Chicago-area locations in 2023, Amazon added hundreds of new name brands, more quick meal options, self-checkout kiosks and the Dash carts.

ekreider wrote:It seems to me that Amazon has some problems just doing the basics of running grocery stores and is too obsessed with technological gimmicks.

ekreider wrote:It seems to me that Amazon has some problems just doing the basics of running grocery stores and is too obsessed with technological gimmicks.

Amazon Fresh grocery store opening ‘very, very soon’ in Arlington Heights

An Amazon Fresh grocery store is finally opening in Tinley Park after fits and starts, with customers being welcomed starting at 8 a.m. Aug. 22.


Amazon Fresh is the company’s 11th location in Illinois, and opened after delays that included Amazon itself holding back on grocery openings. There is also an Amazon Fresh in Oak Lawn.
The 38,000-square-foot store is an anchor in an overhaul of the Tinley Park Plaza shopping center, southeast of 159th Street and Harlem Avenue, and plans for the store had been announced in the summer 2022.