Amazon recently opened its 11th Amazon Fresh grocery store in the second week of March, Bloomberg reports. It’s a rapid expansion of the initiative considering Amazon only opened its first store of this type on an invite-only basis in August 2020 in Los Angeles. The company appears to be gearing up with Bloomberg reporting that it has plans for at least 28 more locations (though Amazon was only willing to confirm five of these).
Amazon’s Fresh stores entail one part of the company’s growing collection of retail stores. They are meant to be less upscale than Amazon’s Whole Foods locations and more significant than its Go and Go Grocery locations. They also don’t use Amazon’s cashierless “Just Walk Out” technology in the US, although the company says it’s testing it with a Fresh store in Illinois.
Despite the rapid expansion, Amazon’s plans still trail traditional retailers. Bloomberg notes that Aldi has plans to open 100 more stores in the US this year, on top of the more than 2,000 stores it already has in the USA. Walmart has over 5,000 stores and clubs, and even Amazon’s Whole Foods has approximately 500 locations.
