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Amazon is revamping its grocery business across brick and mortar and e-commerce, Bloomberg reported.
Tony Hoggett, a former Tesco exec who is Amazon’s SVP of worldwide grocery stores, is leading the effort. “We’re serious about grocery,” he told Bloomberg.
Amazon is merging its e-commerce experience across Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh, and Amazon.com into one online checkout experience. The company today started allowing people without Prime subscriptions in certain US metro areas like Boston and Dallas to place online Amazon Fresh orders, and plans to expand the offer nationwide by the end of the year.
- It’s also adding more Whole Foods products in Amazon warehouses.
The e-commerce giant’s brick-and-mortar Amazon Fresh locations are also getting a refresh, offering a “bright and airy and light experience,” Hoggett said. Today it shared a “first look” at a redesigned Chicago store, featuring 1,500+ new products, lower prices, and new checkout options including self-checkout and updated Dash Carts. In addition to two in the Chicago area, Amazon is currently renovating three stores in Southern California.
- Amazon Fresh has been struggling: Last week, it cut hundreds of lower-level management positions across its stores, and is also facing several lease lawsuits.
Whole Foods, too, will see some changes as part of a push to make Amazon a one-stop shop for groceries. Amazon will let shoppers buy items like Coke and Doritos (products the organic grocer doesn’t carry because of its ingredient standards) online and pick them up in Whole Foods stores, and will open 50 more locations.
“We’re very deliberate about growing a big physical store grocery network in the US and around the world,” Hoggett said.