What does Amazon’s no-cashier Whole Foods mean for the future of grocery stores?
Come with me on a doomsday supermarket spiral
There’s an absolute banger of an Andy Rooney segment (that appears to have been scrubbed from the internet1) where the legendary commentator bemoans how much money he’s wasted throughout his lifetime on mediocre fruit.
The clip follows Rooney, Our Patron Saint of Curmudgeon Causes, as he walks around a grocery store accosting different produce to tell them how inferior they are. He picks up a bunch of bananas wrapped in plastic wrap and declares, “I don’t want six or eight bananas! They got ‘em in a pack. I just want one or two bananas!!!” He eviscerates an unsuspecting Granny Smith apple: “I don’t like green fruit. Green is for vegetables!” He pontificates about what will happen to future generations of grapes now that scientists have effectively castrated them by inventing a seedless variety.
It’s a genre-defining tirade. It’s gerontological canon. It should be part of every J-school curriculum.
This classic Rooney rant was the first thing that came to mind after seeing Cecilia Kang’s article about the new “Just Walk Out” Whole Foods store that opened in Washington, D.C last week. As I read through the piece, I couldn’t help but imagine myself2 as Andy Rooney, puttering around the produce section picking up apples and bananas and shouting into the void about how they represent the downfall of our social order.
As Kang describes in her reporting, the store has no cashiers or checkout kiosk; instead it relies on “hundreds of cameras with a god’s-eye view of customers” and “sensors…placed under each apple, carton of oatmeal and boule of multigrain bread” to track your movements and tabulate your bill. When you’ve gathered everything you wish to purchase, you simply leave the store – and see a charge on your Amazon Prime account.
This is the first Whole Foods store to use Amazon’s cashierless technology, but the automation software isn’t new. Since Amazon opened its first Amazon Go convenience store four years, other outlets have experimented with grab-and-go systems as well, such as Nourish + Bloom in the Atlanta area.
I’m usually eager to embrace the latest technology, so what was it about this technology that made me revert to being a grumpy old man afraid of change? It wasn’t the dystopian nature of the tracking software, a sticking point that seemed to bother most people quoted in the article. In fact, I’m intrigued by the possibility of eliminating the checkout process and shortening my shopping trips.
Instead what feels so unsettling is what this experiment’s long-term impact could mean for supermarkets and the commercial food industry as a whole. We should worry less about how we’re being tracked3 and more about how Amazon’s foray into supermarkets could ultimately alter what food we buy and how we buy it in the future.
Amazon has a habit of killing competition, dragging down entire industries in its wake. In the same week the automated Whole Foods story came out, the retail giant also announced it was closing its brick-and-mortar bookstores. Even as indie bookstores thrived during the pandemic, chain stores like Borders, once shopping mall mainstays, have gone bankrupt. If Amazon makes a play for the supermarket aisles, will grocery chains be susceptible to the same fate?
Cale Guthrie Weissman writes in Modern Retailer about why the premise behind Amazon’s bookstores failed:
Amazon 4-star stores were an experiment in curation…the idea of the brick-and-mortar shop was to feature only the most highly-rated products on Amazon…[and] bring in foot traffic from passersby who would peruse and maybe buy a fun item or two. But that goes against the very reason why Amazon is such a retail powerhouse — it’s not about curation, but ease and practicality.
People don’t shop at Amazon stores because they want to discover something, they buy things that they need and know Amazon will have it at the price they want, when they want it. When you already know you want to pre-order the new Sally Rooney book, the model suits your needs. But it’s not the ideal environment for browsing. The appeal of going to a bookstore is to get personalized recommendations from knowledgeable booksellers – not to choose from the highest-reviewed leaderboard selected by randos on the internet.
Amazon’s unsuccessful foray into bookstores makes me wonder how this will affect our shopping carts. Will stores limit the variety or range of products they carry because Amazon is so focused on speed and convenience? Does this mean more plastic packaging on the shelves? Will there be bulk bins or meat and fish counters? And what if I just want ONE BANANA not a six-pack?!
You can get a glimpse into some of these forthcoming changes from Kang’s description of purchasing a loaf of bread: “At the bakery, I looked for someone to slice my $4.99 Harvest loaf and was directed to an industry-grade bread slicer for customers. A small label warned: Sharp blades. Keep hands clear of all moving parts.”
By attempting to optimize one aspect of the shopping process (the checkout), Amazon is sacrificing the quality of goods and services it provides – not to mention the safety of its customers. Grocery shopping should be a holistic, sensory experience. Store layouts should foster a sense of wonder, encourage you to discover what’s in-season and offer inspiration for what to cook. A cashierless, staffless version flattens your trip to a mere transaction.
I know this is just one store. I know I’m not a business forecaster and I have no authority to make bleak predictions for an industry I never worked in. And I know I’m being slightly irrational in envisioning a future where your grandchild stumbles upon an old clip of “Supermarket Sweep” on their iPhone 200 and turns to you all wide-eyed and curious and asks, “Grandperson, what is a supermarket?” Still we’ve seen how Amazon has destroyed industries before – so maybe I’m not so crazy.
There is probably some argument I could be making about governments and competition, supply chains and food deserts. And I haven’t even started on the potential labor implications. But instead of standing on my soapbox and rallying the masses, I’d rather just kvetch. Maybe one day I’ll go to the automated Whole Foods and see if my fears are valid. At the very least I’ll find out, if you scream at produce in a grocery store and there are no cashiers around to hear you, do you even make a sound?
Further reading
There were a lot of threads I wanted to explore in this piece but didn’t have the time or space to include, so I’ve included some of those ideas here with links if you want to go farther down the rabbit hole with me:
What will become of the humans who make the “Just Walk Out” technology possible? Big Tech sells the wizardry of instant delivery while invisible humans toil behind the curtain to power the machines. In his New York Mag cover story, “Revolt of the Delivery Drivers” (originally published in September 2021), Josh Dzieza embeds with the people on the other end of your DoorDash or UberEats order. His account deserves a Pulitzer, or at least a Netflix series.
Where do robots fit into all of this? What happened to the Amazon delivery ones we were promised — or the Marty robots at Giant stores? Most importantly, does he still get to celebrate his birthday every year?
Where does online groceries shopping fit into the equation? This Planet Money story on Gorillas, a company that promises grocery delivery in under 20 minutes, had me thinking about how warehouses and ghost kitchens could replace storefronts in major cities.
Finally, why have no companies tried to deliver on the dehydrated food technology from “Back to the Future: Part II”? We should be eating instant Pizza Hut right now.
The only evidence of this video I can find is a recording someone uploaded to YouTube in 2009 with the title, “An Old Man’s Fruit Opinion.”
I would have gone to the store in person if I was in D.C. right now. Alas, I’m still Home for Purim.