Amazon is closing its grocery stores. Here’s what it’s building instead

Amazon will double down on the Whole Foods brand, killing two of its own physical retail experiments in the process.

The online retail giant said Tuesday that it will close all of its Amazon Go convenience stores and Amazon Fresh brick-and-mortar grocery stores. In total, around 70 locations across the two sub-brands will close starting at the beginning of February, with some to later reopen under the Whole Foods brand.

Amazon Fresh stores served as a physical counterpart to Amazon’s online grocery delivery service by the same name while Amazon Go stores offered convenience store staples with a high-tech checkout twist.

“After a careful evaluation of the business and how we can best serve customers, we’ve made the difficult decision to close our Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores, converting various locations into Whole Foods Market stores,” Amazon wrote in a blog update, adding that it “gathered valuable insights” during their operation.

The Amazon brand might take a back seat in its brick-and-mortar strategy, but the retail giant’s IRL ambitions remain. Amazon also announced plans to open more than 100 new Whole Foods stores over the next few years. When the latest Go and Fresh store closures are wrapped up, Amazon’s network of Whole Foods stores will serve as the company’s only physical retail footprint – at least for now.

With the closures, Amazon is backing off of its long experiment with Fresh and Go physical retail stores, which tested emerging retail technology and pushed its brand into new shopping categories. 

Amazon Go was known for allowing shoppers to pick up what they wanted and “Just Walk Out” instead of individually scanning items in a traditional checkout counter. That system, which relied on sensors and overhead cameras to track what shoppers purchased and linking it to their accounts digitally. 

While Amazon once held an ambitious roadmap for a vast network of physical stores centered around its Just Walk Out technology, the company has scaled back consistently in recent years. In 2018, Amazon was reportedly planning to open up to 3,000 cashierless stores running the technology over the next three years. By early 2026, Amazon Go was down to just 14 stores.

The high cost of outfitting stores with a sophisticated array of sensors eventually dimmed those ambitions, with the company backtracking to a system that lets customers scan items to smart carts as they shop. Amazon now licenses the Just Walk Out technology out to third parties, including a number of merch, food and beverage locations in Lumen Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks.

Amazon is still tinkering around with ways to bring its digital storefront into the physical shopping realm. Even as it rolls back some smaller-scale retail plans, Amazon clearly still wants to take a bite out of the everyday shopping and grocery success that brands like Walmart and Costco enjoy. 

As soon as next year, Amazon plans to open its first massive, big box-style store stocked with home goods, groceries and prepared food in the Chicago area. “It’s purpose-built for what we see retail customers demand today,” an Amazon lawyer told local officials, who went on to greenlight the project last week.

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