Amazon Fresh to open Thursday in Naperville
Amazon Fresh, the ecommerce giant’s budding chain of physical grocery stores, is set to open Thursday in Naperville, the first of four stores the company is planning in the Chicago area.
The high-tech shopping experience will include the option to use Dash Carts, which use cameras, sensors and scales to identify the items selected and ring them up, allowing customers to skip the checkout line. Terminals outfitted with voice-enabled Alexa, Amazon’s personal assistant technology, will help shoppers locate products and offer recipe suggestions.
The 35,000-square-foot Naperville store, at 3116 S. Route 59, is the fifth Amazon Fresh store nationwide and the first outside of California. Amazon has been using the space since July to fulfill online grocery orders.
Seattle-based Amazon, which opened its first Fresh store in September in Los Angeles, is investing in bricks-and-mortar as the pandemic fuels a surge in online grocery sales.
“We believe that both today and in the future there is a real place for in-store shopping, and we think we offer something new and different,” said Jeff Helbling, vice president of Amazon Fresh Stores.
The Fresh concept is focused on convenience as well as low prices, such as 15-cent bananas and rotisserie chicken for $4.97.
Prime members can get free same-day delivery and pickup. A section of the store will be dedicated to pick-up lockers and returns for items bought online or in-store, without the need for packaging or shipping labels.
The Naperville store will have a sushi chef, deli, bakery, pizza counter and a made-to-order sandwich counter.
Its assortment will include big national brands as well as local brands like Oberweis Dairy and Revolution Brewing. It will offer Whole Foods Market’s 365 organics line and Amazonexclusive brands, including its new private-label wine brand Cursive.
The Fresh stores are being watched closely as a potentially disruptive force in the grocery industry. They are Amazon’s biggest foray into physical retail since it bought Whole Foods in 2017.
Conventional grocers like Jewel and Mariano’s, which have similar product offerings, will face greater competition from Amazon Fresh than specialty grocers like Fresh Thyme or Standard Market that have more premium and gourmet products, said Amanda Lai, manager at Chicago-based retail consultancy McMillan Doolittle.
Its competitive pricing also will put pressure on budget grocer Aldi, she said.
Meanwhile, local independent grocers like Pete’s Fresh Market and Tony’s Fresh Market, which lack the buying power to compete on price, “will have to emphasize their local roots and superior customer service to stay competitive against Amazon Fresh, which lacks the communal ties of these independents and is more technologyfocused than customer-focused,” Lai said.
Amazon has announced plans for four Fresh stores in the Chicago area, and is hiring 1,500 people at a starting pay of $15 an hour. Helbling declined to say when the stores in Bloomingdale, Oak Lawn and Schaumburg might open.
“We’re excited about Chicago and Illinois more broadly,” said Helbling, who lived in Chicago for a decade before moving to Seattle.
While the local debut is focused on the suburbs, the overall real estate strategy includes city locations, Helbling said.
Amazon has not announced how many Fresh stores it plans to open overall. Analysts have estimated the company is planning for a U.S. footprint of 2,000 physical grocery stores, including about 750 Whole Foods. It also operates about 30 automated Amazon Go convenience stores in big cities.