Amazon debuts cashier-less store in downtown Seattle

SEATTLE— Amazon Go is a go for the masses. The retailer’s cashier less convenience store opened its doors to the public Monday, a debut that follows a nearly 14month trial run open only to the Seattle company’s employees. The store requires customers to scan their smartphone on the way in, tracks them with cameras and other sensors as they browse, and, when they take an item off the shelf, adds it to a virtual cart. Groceries are charged to the customer’s Amazon account when they leave with their goods.

At 7 a.m., the store opened to anyone with the Amazon Go smartphone app and a linked Amazon account.

The concept, which Amazon has termed “Just Walk Out” shopping, sparked speculation that Amazon could use its hightech concept as a beachhead to expand into convenience stores or perhaps other categories of physical retail.

It was also criticized by grocery-store workers’ unions, which feared an effort to automate the work done by cashiers, the second-most-common job in the U.S.

The range of items available lands somewhere between that of a small gasstation convenience store and a mainline grocer. Amazon had four varieties of co- conut water on hand, but there is no hot food selection, and few items beyond snacks, drinks and basic groceries.

Of course, Amazon Go isn’t the company’s only experiment in physical grocery retail. Amazon spent about $13.5 billion last year to scoop up more than 460 Whole Foods locations.

Amazon likely isn’t aiming for a Go store on every street corner. The company’s internal projections, according to someone familiar with the early stages of Amazon’s plans, determined that a store needed thousands of office workers within a few-block radius to make the investment worthwhile.