After going to Amazon Fresh, I comparison-shopped at my usual grocery store, a Harris Teeter. I found Amazon’s prices were competitive with this conventional, full-size grocery store.That last bit describes my usual grocery shopping habits. With Fresh Market a five minute walk (and Safeway a five minute drive) away, frequent trips for small perishibles is pretty much my jam. Everything else comes from Amazon online or infrequent trips to the big-box Meijer or Target over on Keystone.
On average, I found Amazon’s prices were slightly lower than Harris Teeter’s, though the difference was small enough that I’m going to call it a tie.
Amazon’s no-checkout technology helps in several ways here. Obviously, buying groceries is more convenient if you don’t have to wait in a checkout line. Equally obvious, Amazon can pass along the money it saves by not having checkout clerks.
More subtly, removing checkout counters allows the stores to be smaller—not only because you don’t need the physical space for the checkout lanes, but also because you don’t need a large volume of business to recoup the fixed cost of running the checkout lanes. So instead of having a single big store, Amazon could profitably build several small stores to serve the same area. That would mean more customers living within easy walking distance of an Amazon Fresh store—customers who might get in the habit of stopping by Amazon Fresh stores every day or two for fruit, milk, and other perishables.
I don't know about the "no checkout" tech, but if it's reasonably de-bugged, it does remove the biggest hassle from grocery shopping. I was already a fan of self checkout, which is a tech that Fresh Market has not embraced.
.
