SEATTLE -- Amazon has done it again … again. The e-retailer opened its third and largest Amazon Go location to the public in Seattle on Sept. 5. The unit covers 2,100 square feet and has opened just more than a week after the second location.
Amazon Go cuts out the checkout process for the customer. Instead, customers swipe a QR code from the Amazon Go app to enter the store while sensors and cameras track their movement and purchases. Once the customer leaves the store, the app automatically charges them for the items they took from the store and shows them a receipt. It even notifies customers of how long they spent inside.
The third store is at Boren Avenue North and Thomas Street, within Amazon’s urban campus in South Lake Union. The first Amazon Go location measured 1,800 square feet, and the second is the smallest so far at 1,450 square feet.
Amazon has not responded to a request for comments on the contents of the new store or plans for future locations; however, online tech news source Tech Crunch reports the new store will include breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack items, in addition to bread, milk, locally made chocolates and Amazon meal kits.
While the two Seattle locations have opened within about a week of one another, Amazon has said little publicly about details or a time frame to open more locations in San Francisco and Chicago since it confirmed plans for those locations in May.
Similar frictionless checkout concepts are appearing as Amazon steps up the pace to open Amazon Go stores. CSP recently took an exclusive tour of Zippin, a startup with headquarters in San Francisco. Zippin is a “checkout-free” platform similar to Amazon Go, but its creators want to sell the platform to existing retailers. Anderson, Ind.-based Ricker’s recently announced plans to roll out an app-based checkout service in all 58 of its convenience stores that allows customers to scan items with their mobile device and show the receipt on the screen to an employee before leaving. Even big-box retailers are looking into frictionless checkout. Walmart is reportedly in talks with Microsoft to develop its own version of no-checkout technology.
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