In recent history online shopping giant Amazon has widened its business model to include music/video streaming, cloud computing, creating its own snack food, clothing labels and consumer electronics but, it hasn’t stopped there. In an article recently published by The Wall Street Journal, it appears that Amazon is looking to create their own grocery stores.
The grocery stores or Project Como as it’s known internally are stores set to be small brick and mortar stores that sell milk, meats, produce and other perishables that customers can grab quickly. Customers can also use their phones or stations around the store to order other goods with longer shelf lives delivered to their door the same day.
For those who are looking to do larger shopping trips but don’t have the time, Amazon is going to be rolling out drive in locations where the online grocery orders are brought to the car. While many grocery stores offer this feature already Amazon is looking to improve the service by implementing a license plate reading technology to improve wait times.
Amazon hopes to profit in an environment where groceries account for 1/5 of consumer spending and online orders only count for 2% of U.S. grocery sales. If they can create a large enough presence Amazon can capitalize on a market where the average consumer spends $5,500 in groceries a year; that is more than double the average Amazon Prime member’s spending and ten times what nonmembers spend!
Don’t expect this service in most of our neighborhoods anytime soon as Amazon likes to test out new services in their backyard before releasing it to the public. But who knows, maybe in a few years we won’t have to wait in the ridiculously long lines at Giant Eagle anymore.
All the best,
Wesley R. Nicholson, Mike Allen and Aaron Everdyke