Amazon to shut all four Go stores in S.F.

Amazon has announced it will close all its cashierless Go convenience stores in San Francisco on April 1.

The closure of four Go stores in San Francisco will shut all physical stores in the Bay Area. The closures, announced last week, will also impact two stores in Seattle and two in New York City, the company said.

“Like any physical retailer, we periodically assess our portfolio of stores and make optimization decisions along the way,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “In this case, we’ve decided to close a small number of Amazon Go stores in Seattle, New York City, and San Francisco. We remain committed to the Amazon Go format, operate more than 20 Amazon Go stores across the U.S., and will continue to learn which locations and features resonate most with customers as we keep evolving our Amazon Go stores.”

The San Francisco stores are at 300 California St., 3 Embarcadero Center, 98 Post St. and 575 Market St.

The company said it will work with affected workers to find new roles at Amazon and is still looking to open more Go stores elsewhere. Go stores don’t have cashiers, but workers prepare food and stock shelves.

Amazon opened its first Go stores in 2018, a move that many thought was bringing the future of retail to the city, where smartphones replace cashiers and registers. Shoppers could grab items and pay through smartphones to skip lines. The company expanded to three stores in less than a year.

Last year, the company announced that it would close more than 50 of its physical retail stores, according to the New York Times. The closures impacted two dozen bookstores and about 30 4-star stores, which sell general merchandise.

Earlier this year, Amazon released more details about a series of layoffs that ultimately affected 18,000 employees across the company. Those layoffs impacted 104 workers in its San Francisco offices and 157 employees across its Sunnyvale locations.