Retail trade Amazon closes mini supermarkets without tills
Amazon is closing its mini supermarkets without tills. The first stores under the Amazon Go brand, where customers can simply grab products from the shelves and walk out, opened in the USA in 2018.
28.01.2026, 02:36
SDA
Weight sensors on the shelves and cameras on the ceiling are intended to ensure that purchases are correctly allocated and subsequently debited.
The technology is now being used by other retailers at more than 360 locations in five countries, Amazon emphasized. These include a hospital cafeteria and an ice hockey arena. The company also uses it itself - for catering for employees in more than 40 of its logistics centers in North America. However, this is now the end for the 14 Amazon Go stores in North America.
Amazon Fresh supermarkets are also closing
Industry experts had already pointed out in recent years that the technology for cashierless shopping was complex and therefore expensive. This makes it difficult to expand it to larger retail spaces.
The world's largest retailer is also closing its stores under the Amazon Fresh brand, which operate like normal supermarkets. There were recently more than 50 of these, and the company had not managed to find a business model for a far-reaching expansion of the store network.
Some of the discontinued Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go locations are to be converted into supermarkets of the Whole Foods chain, which the Group acquired in 2017. Amazon did not initially comment on whether the technology for checkout-free shopping could continue to be used there. Amazon Fresh offered some of the same brands as Whole Foods, often at lower prices.
In recent years, Amazon has tried out various ways to move from online retail into brick-and-mortar stores, particularly in the USA - and abandoned many of them. These included bookstores and stores for electronics and fashion.
