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XAmazon Unveils Cashier-less Supermarket of the Future — and L.A. Waits in Line

Amazon unveiled its supermarket of the future, a grocery store without cashiers or checkout lines considered a technological breakthrough in the $800 billion industry. Shoppers get to grab-and-go with a full cart of items that are scanned automatically and billed to their bank accounts.
But don't expect to see it anytime soon in Los Angeles.
The surveillance-style experience is a harbinger of things to come as futurists describe the 2.0 of an everyday task: Buying food at a market. There's only one problem. The prototype of a new way to pick up customer's meat, cheese, and dairy is only happening in just one location in Seattle, where Amazon is the city's biggest tech employer.
Amazon has no plans to install the cashless technology at its Whole Foods stores or put it in their conventional grocery set to open in a former 33,000 square foot Toys R' Us in Woodland Hills, according to Jeffries analyst Christopher Mandeville. Amazon would not confirm.
Meanwhile, union officials are gearing up for a fight.
"Amazon has two concepts for its grocery business: bad jobs and no jobs. There's nothing innovative about either one of them," said John Grant, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 770 in an emailed statement. The union represents 47,000 grocery store workers in Southern California. "This is about the richest person on earth seeking new ways to further enrich himself on the backs of workers, communities, and now technology. We will not stand for it."
He may not have to. West Hollywood outlawed cashless stores last year joining a growing list of cities including New York, San Francisco and New Jersey who also prohibit it, saying that it discriminates against low income residents with no bank account. Meanwhile, it's unclear whether consumers will embrace the format.
The Seattle location can be entered by scanning a smartphone app and strolling the aisles of the completely stocked store. The banks of cameras and sensors overhead track everything put into a shopping cart, with the help of artificial intelligence — rendering unnecessary the old-fashioned ritual of scanning and paying at a checkout stand. Items are charged to a shopper's Amazon account shortly after they walk through the exit.
Amazon Go Grocery is big enough that it's offering shopping carts. GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser
Apart from the larger size, the concept is very similar to the Amazon Go convenience stores that first opened to the public in Seattle in January 2018. Amazon Go has expanded to 25 locations across cities including San Francisco, Chicago and New York. That smaller concept, sized between 450 and 2,700 square feet, ushered in an era of grab-and-go shopping.
"What Amazon Go did for central business districts — like locating it very close to where people work so you can get breakfast, lunch, snacks — Amazon Go Grocery does the same thing, but closer to home," said Dilip Kumar, vice president of Physical Retail & Technology for Amazon. "It's a new format, it's not just a bigger Amazon Go. It's a much more expanded selection that caters to what people are looking for shopping for groceries."
What Amazon is looking for is yet another answer to traditional retail, where it's leveraging convenience and technology in the grocery industry. The tech giant scooped up Whole Foods in 2017 in a bid to take on the sizeable brick-and-mortar footprints of Walmart, Target, Kroger and others. Those companies have consistently responded to Amazon's digital pushes around online grocery ordering and delivery.
Mandeville said in a research note that it's unclear whether it will pencil out, but the new format provides Amazon an opportunity to expand their white label products. "Questions still remain over unit economics and shopper adoption. That said, this is another example that Amazon is forcing the issue - grocers must continue to invest, innovate."
Amazon posted $4.4 billion in revenue last quarter in its physical stores category, which includes Whole Foods and Amazon Go stores.
The Wall Street Journal reported last fall that Amazon had signed leases for more than a dozen locations in Los Angeles with plans to expand the chain. Kumar declined to say how many Amazon Go Grocery stores are coming, where the next one might be, or whether they will all be the same size. Plans for the larger grocery concept in Los Angeles and elsewhere are "something else" entirely, he said, but he likes what they built first in Seattle.
The continued push toward tech and automation has fueled the ongoing debate around human workers being replaced by machines. Amazon Go Grocery will staff just a handful of associates.
Last year under pressure from advocates, Amazon's Go store in New York began accepting cash.
"Consumers aren't demanding this," Grant said. "Its 'cashierless' convenience stores have underperformed comparable stores manned by people."
Hundreds of cameras in the ceiling overhead make up the key technological component of the just-walk-out concept, and they're put to the biggest test in the produce section, where a variety of individually priced fruits and vegetables are available.
"Most of the things at Amazon Go are packaged, or they're single items like a can of Coke," Kumar said. "But here, people are shopping for potatoes or they're shopping for onions — there's a lot more browsing and rummaging that tends to happen. That's what makes this problem a lot more complicated."
Ready-made meals at Amazon Go Grocery are intended to answer, "What's for dinner?"
Matt Casey, a retail market analyst who works with supermarket grocery chains said he's not sure the grand experiment will work. "I gotta believe there's gonna be a ton of glitches in the beginning," he said. "But, they are the ones who call the shots, not the public. They create and people react to them, not the other way around. They have deep pockets that will allow them to try this."
Meanwhile, Walmart and Target are stepping up their grocery delivery service and other chains are investing in automation.
Amazon's goal is to generate accurate receipts, no matter how long you stand over the avocados or apples, shifting them around and picking them up before settling on three and then changing your mind to two.
The cameras are keeping track of those "interactions" with the product and know exactly what is being taken off shelves and put back. Allowing people to do this type of "considered shopping" plays into the Go Grocery concept of making sure that customers don't have to do anything unnatural when it comes to how they shop.
"They're used to seeing produce laid out in [a traditional] way," Kumar said, joking about how it's almost necessary, as a shopper, to get spritzed by the misters in the lettuce section.
Kumar called a robust produce section the hallmark of any good grocery store, and Amazon Go Grocery sources its organic produce from the same farms that supply Whole Foods. Its 365 organic label is on prominent display.
Up and down aisles throughout the store — there are 5,000 unique items — national brands are mixed with local favorites that Amazon believes its neighborhood customers would expect the store to stock.
There is no meat or seafood counter and no food preparation on the premises. Fish, chicken and beef products are brought in several times a week, individually wrapped. Signage near cases advises customers on the differences between cuts of meat or wild caught seafood vs. farmed fish. There is also an artisan cheese area where people can get the same sort of quick education via signage rather than from a human cheesemonger.
And it's another indication that Amazon Go Grocery goes beyond Amazon Go.
Back near the front of the store, the quicker grab-and-go nature of what Amazon likes about its Go concept is more readily on display. It's here where the fresh baked goods — donuts, bagels, fritters and more — and self-serve coffee and espresso stations are located. There's a sizable alcohol section — where you'll run into a human who has to check your ID. And around the corner is a large section called "Meals Made Easy" that caters to the what's-for-dinner shopper with entrées including pasta, salad, pizza, sushi and more.
What to grab at the end of the day was a big driver in Amazon's decision to extend Go into grocery, closer to where people live.
The entire footprint for the location, including space for back stock and more, is 10,400 square feet. But the store will not serve as a hub for grocery delivery, the company said.
And it won't replace Whole Foods or other methods that shoppers appreciate because Amazon said it has come to realize that customers want to shop in a variety of different ways for a variety of different needs.
"Some people want their food delivered, some people want to go shopping at Whole Foods, some people want to shop at a different kind of store," Kumar said. "The single biggest thing that people say is that they don't have enough time to do all the things that they need to do. One of the key things that we always index on is how we can provide the convenience that customers expect in places where they are."
A version of this story first appeared on GeekWire.
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Rachel Uranga is dot.LA's Managing Editor, News. She is a former Mexico-based market correspondent at Reuters and has worked for several Southern California news outlets, including the Los Angeles Business Journal and the Los Angeles Daily News. She has covered everything from IPOs to immigration. Uranga is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and California State University Northridge. A Los Angeles native, she lives with her husband, son and their felines.
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California Debates Data Privacy as SCOTUS Allows Abortion Bans
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
The United States Supreme Court called a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks constitutional on Friday, overturning the country’s founding abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court also upheld that there cannot be any restriction on how far into a pregnancy abortion can be banned.
When Politico first broke the news months before SCOTUS’s final ruling, a slew of bills entered Congress to protect data privacy and prevent the sale of data, which can be triangulated to see if a person has had an abortion or if they are seeking an abortion and have historically been used by antiabortion individuals who would collect this information during their free time.
Democratic lawmakers led by Congresswoman Anna Eshoo called on Google to stop collecting location data. The chair of the Federal Trade Commission has long voiced plans for the agency to prevent data collection. A week after the news, California Assembly passed A.B. 2091, a law that would prevent insurance companies and medical providers from sharing information in abortion-related cases (the state Senate is scheduled to deliberate on it in five days).
These scattered bills attempt to do what health privacy laws do not. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, was established in 1996 when the Internet was still young and most people carried flip phones. The act declared health institutions were not allowed to share or disclose patients’ health information. Google, Apple and a slew of fertility and health apps are not covered under HIPAA, and fertility app data can be subpoenaed by law enforcement.
California’s Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (or CMIA), goes further than HIPAA by encompassing apps that store medical information under the broader umbrella of health institutions that include insurance companies and medical providers. And several how-tos on protecting data privacy during Roe v. Wade have been published in the hours of the announcement.
But reproductive rights organizations say data privacy alone cannot fix the problem. According to reproductive health policy think tank Guttmacher Institute, the closest state with abortion access to 1.3 million out-of-state women of reproductive age is California. One report from the UCLA Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy estimates as many as 9,400 people will travel to Los Angeles County every year to get abortions, and that number will grow as more states criminalize abortions.
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
LA Tech ‘Moves’: Adtech Firm OpenX Lures New SVP, Getlabs and DISQO Tap New VPs
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
“Moves,” our roundup of job changes in L.A. tech, is presented by Interchange.LA, dot.LA's recruiting and career platform connecting Southern California's most exciting companies with top tech talent. Create a free Interchange.LA profile here—and if you're looking for ways to supercharge your recruiting efforts, find out more about Interchange.LA's white-glove recruiting service by emailing Sharmineh O’Farrill Lewis (sharmineh@dot.la). Please send job changes and personnel moves to moves@dot.la.
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Advertising technology company OpenX Technologies appointed Geoff Wolinetz as senior vice president of demand platforms. Wolinetz was most recently senior vice president of growth at Chalice Custom Algorithms.
Remote health care infrastructure provider Getlabs hired Jaime LaFontaine as its vice president of business development. L.A.-based LaFontaine was previously director of business development for Alto Pharmacy.
Customer experience platform DISQO tapped Andrew Duke as its vice president of product, consumer applications. Duke previously served as Oracle’s senior director of strategy and product.
Media company Wheelhouse DNA named Michael Senzer as senior manager of Additive Creative, its newly launched digital talent management division. Senzer was previously vice president of business development at TalentX Entertainment.
Fintech lending platform Camino Financial hired Dana Rainford as vice president of people and talent. Rainford previously served as head of human resources at Westwood Financial.
Kourtney Day returned to entertainment company Jim Henson’s Creature Shop as senior director of business development. Day mostly recently served as business development manager for themed entertainment at Solomon Group.
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
This Week in ‘Raises’: Miracle Miles Lands $100M, Fintech Startup Tapcheck Hauls $20M
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
In this week’s edition of “Raises”: An L.A.-based footwear company closed $100 million to boost its expansion into the global market, while there were Series A raises for local fintech, biotech and space startups.
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Venture Capital
Miracle Miles Group, an L.A.-based footwear company, raised a $100 million Series A funding round co-led by IDG Capital and Sequoia Capital China.
Deno, a San Diego-based software development startup, raised a $21 million Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital.
Tapcheck, an L.A.-based financial wellness startup that helps workers access their paycheck before payday, raised a $20 million Series A funding round led by PeakSpan Capital.
Gemelli Biotech, an L.A.- and Raleigh, N.C.-based biotech startup focused on gastrointestinal diseases, raised a $19 million Series A financing round led by Blue Ox Healthcare Partners.
Epsilon3, an L.A.-based space operations software startup, raised a $15 million Series A funding round led by Lux Capital.
Global Premier Fertility, an Irvine-based fertility company, raised an $11 million Series C funding round led by Triangle Capital Corporation.
Vamstar, an L.A.- and London-based medical supply chain platform, raised a $9.5 million Series A funding round co-led by Alpha Intelligence Capital and Dutch Founders Fund.
System 9, an L.A.-based digital asset market-making firm focused on the crypto altcoin market, raised a $5.7 million Series A funding round led by Capital6 Eagle.
Myria, an L.A.-based online marketplace of luxury goods and services, raised a $4.3 million seed round from Y Combinator, Backend Capital, Cathexis Ventures and other angel investors.
Binarly, an L.A.-based firmware cybersecurity company, raised a $3.6 million seed round from WestWave Capital and Acrobator Ventures.
Raises is dot.LA’s weekly feature highlighting venture capital funding news across Southern California’s tech and startup ecosystem. Please send fundraising news to Decerry Donato (decerrydonato@dot.la).
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Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.