If you ask random people on the street about the status of the Amazon Fresh store at Town & Country Center at the southeast corner of Arlington Heights Road and Palatine Road, you’re likely to get an incorrect answer that the store is not opening.
Even though the Amazon Fresh sign of a future Arlington Heights store at 325 East Palatine Road was removed in April 2023, the store is opening soon, according to a listing for Town & Country Center [PDF] on the property management website Visconsi Companies, LTD.
According to Visconsi’s map of the Town & Country Center, an Amazon grocery store is opening Summer 2024. Interestingly, the graphic on the map indicates an “amazon grocery store” with a stylized typeface is opening at 325 East Palatine Road in Arlington Heights. The graphic does not use the familiar amazon fresh logo. For now, let’s not read too much into that technicality.
Additionally, a commercial real estate listing on the Mid-America Group website has a listing for an Amazon Fresh Sublease (this listing was also updated February 29, 2024 on commercialsearch.com.
Both listings describe that a 4,346 square foot sublease of the new Amazon Fresh (coming soon) is available. The long, thin retail sublease space (front-to-back) is located between the future Amazon grocery space and Walgreens.
SUBLEASE LISTING …
4,346 SF Sublease of the new Amazon Fresh (Coming Soon).
Proximity to major intersection with combined traffic counts exceeding 190,000 vpd.
White Box Delivery.
Easy accessibility with traffic signals off Rand Rd, Palatine, Rd and Arlington Heights Rd.
New At Home furniture and freestanding Chipotle now open across the street.
[White Box delivery indicates a new, undeveloped space with base amenities. VPD = vehicles per day]
The Amazon Fresh store was originally scheduled to open about a year ago in early 2023, but the opening was delayed. Apparently the reasons for the delay were related to the re-structuring of how Amazon Fresh stores would operate nationwide — including enhancements to the features of their smart shopping carts, and operational changes involving additions of hundreds of national and private label brands. The major changes were occurring nationwide just about the time the Arlington Heights Amazon Fresh store was supposed to open.
Apparently, the grand opening for the new Arlington Heights Amazon Fresh store got caught up in the nationwide changeover.
While there were some analysts skeptical about Amazon’s viability in the grocery market, Amazon appears to be committed and dedicated to the grocery store market with the introduction of highly innovative features for their customers’ grocery shopping experience.
Changes were announced July 11, 2022 regarding enhancement to their Dash Cart — the smart shopping cart that assists customers while shopping, and then allows customers to pay while skipping the checkout line.
Amazon’s original smart cart was introduced in September 2020.
DASH CART …
According to Amazon, the new version of the Amazon Fresh Dash Cart features …
a real-time receipt on the electronic cart display,
appearance on the display of fresh items (such as produce) that are near the cart when approached,
the ability to input a search by product name instead of by PLU code (e.g, Gala apple instead of 4132, 4133,4134 or 4135),
the ability to weigh produce directly in the cart without stopping the cart,
a lighter weight shopping cart to push around,
increased shopping cart capacity (four-bag limit instead of two),
a new ‘delicates’ shelf, and
a new ‘lower shelf’ for over-size items.
Back-end improvements included a smart cart that is more precisely located in the store by the Amazon store’s information system, which improves the display of nearby products and deals for the customer. The cart also has an improved extended all-day battery life, and was tested for durability in extreme cold and extreme heat.
Recently stores in Schaumburg and Oak Lawn, Illinois; Amazon added hundreds of additional national and private label brands, including baking products, dairy, home care, health, and snacks categories.
In Summer 2023, the Schaumburg and Oak Lawn Amazon Fresh locations were also upgraded to the new version of the Dash Cart.
Some other stores also needed to remove the Just Walk Out feature, replacing the Just Walk Out feature with the Dash Cart. At the Amazon Fresh store in North Riverside, the Just Walk Out feature is being removed or has been removed in 2024 with removal of ceiling cameras that are used to operate the Just Walk Out feature (CARDINAL NEWS couldn’t reach the North Riverside store by telephone to find out if the store changed over).
FLASHBACK TO NORTH-RIVERSIDE 2022 … According to a Riverside-Brookfield Landmark article by Bob Uphues the North Riverside Amazon Fresh store would open on June 9, 2022 without any special carts. North Riverside Village Administrator Sue Scarpiniti told Uphues, “This store will have their newest technology. There won’t be any special carts. When you walk in, you scan a QR code (on your phone) and get a basket. As you take items off the shelf they’re registered onto your phone and when you exit, you automatically check out.”
In 2021, Amazon described the ‘Just Walk Out’ technology as a feature that uses computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning to give customers the option to shop, and then skip the checkout line when shopping is complete.
For the Just Walk Out feature to function, multiple cameras were installed near the ceiling on both sides of the shopping aisles to monitor the products that are placed in a traditional shopping cart. A source told CARDINAL NEWS that the Just Walk Out technology was not working as well as expected. There were security issues and loss control issues with the ceiling cameras. Apparently as part of Amazon’s innovation process, the company discovered that the ceiling cameras and other Just Walk Out technology didn’t work out as well as the capabilities of the Dash Cart.
Regarding global Amazon Fresh development, Amazon also recently announced expansion of Amazon Fresh grocery delivery, and free pickup to customers without a Prime membership in the United States. Amazon also announced redesigned multiple Amazon Fresh stores in the United Kingdom and the United States. Several new Whole Foods Market stores have also opened in the United States, and on Monday Whole Foods Market (owned by Amazon) announced the planned opening of a smaller 4,000 to 7,000 square foot store format, known as a Whole Foods Market Daily Shop.
Amazon also expanded third-party grocery delivery with additional Weis Markets supermarkets in the U.S. and ARCS Supermarket in Japan.
Schaumburg Store
In 2023, CEO Andy Jassy wrote that Amazon aspires “to serve more of our customers’ grocery needs than we do today. To do so, we need a broader physical store footprint given that most of the grocery shopping still happens in physical venues.”
Jassy explained that grocery is an $800B market segment in the US alone, and that Amazon “has built a somewhat unusual, but significant grocery business over nearly 20 years.”
According to Jassy, Amazon offers more than three million items compared to a typical supermarket, which offers 30K items for the same categories, such as paper products, canned and boxed food, candy and snacks, pet care, health and personal care, and beauty.
Articles in Forbes, diginomica and Financial Times indicated in February 2023 that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had confidence that Amazon has a very significant opportunity in the grocery segment, but that Amazon is “experimenting with these stores to find a format that is differentiated from competitors and resonates with shoppers.”
In a Financial Times article written by Dave Lee Amazon chief vows to ‘go big’ on physical stores, the article content offers a brighter outlook (regarding 2023 intentions) for Amazon Fresh stores.
The February 2023 news among various business news sources offers optimism that wasn’t expressed in Company News from Amazon in November 2022 that reported that there will be reductions impacting employee roles in Stores and the PXT (People, Experience, and Technology) organization.
Google Listing for Amazon Fresh Arlington Heights Store Removed
A status change was recognized Thursday, February 16, 2023 for the Google listing for the Amazon Fresh Arlington Heights store (Google search) recently developed over the past two years. The store that has not yet opened, and is apparently one of the stores that was paused by Amazon, showed a Google search result listing status as “Permanently Closed” early Thursday, February 16, 2023. After an inquiry by CARDINAL NEWS to Amazon and the Town & Country Center management, the store status changed to “Temporarily Closed” Thursday evening, February 16, 2023. Then Friday, February 17, 2023, the Google search result for Amazon Fresh Arlington Heights did not include a listing for the Arlington Heights store at 345 East Palatine Road at all — for a period Friday there was no listing. Then, later Friday, the Google search result instead referred to the Amazon Fresh Schaumburg store listing at Golf Road and Roselle Road in Schaumburg.
GOOGLE SCREEN SHOTS 2023
Amazon Fresh “Temporarily Closed”
late evening Thursday, February 16, 2023
(SOURCE: Google) …
RELATED NEWS …
Forbes | Amazon Is Closing Some Amazon Fresh And Amazon Go Stores – Are Groceries Profitable?
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