The latest Go Amazon Cashier Store opens in San Francisco today

Amazon's latest experimental convenience store Go opens in San Francisco, adding that Bay City is the third region after Chicago and Seattle in the current expansion of the company's offline retail business. The store, located at the corner of California and Battery in the city's financial district, was modeled after the five existing locations. It mainly serves prepared meals, snacks and beverages, with an emphasis on Amazon's range of sandwiches, salads and packed lunches. But the big innovation is the complete removal of the payment process.

Instead of queuing and paying for cash, cameras and sensors follow your movements in the store once you have scanned your Amazon account at the front and watch as you remove items from the shelves. When you leave, you pay what you took and you receive a digital receipt via Amazon's standalone Go app. Last week, I visited around 2300 square feet. His windows were covered and his existence was largely secret until the San Francisco Chronicle revealed the address Thursday using the property records.

The interior is a very good convenience store, with a few seats and a microwave in the front to warm frozen prepared meals and eat if you wish. Regarding the checkout, everything worked as advertised. I've used the Amazon Go app to go through a set of automated doors near the front and, from there, I picked up a bánh mì chicken sandwich made by Amazon and I'm left without a hitch.

Picture of Nick Statt / The Verge

The store's motto is "Good Food Fast". The application records even the time you spent at each visit to boast the effectiveness of the model without cashier. Dilip Kumar, Amazon's vice president of Amazon's technology at Amazon Go, told me that the main goal of the Go model was to save users time. "As there were people [the store] It's not a function of time anymore, "Kumar told me. With Go stores, the company wants to eliminate the rush of the morning or lunch concept, as well as the idea that you have to limit what you buy and where you eat, depending on how much time you have to place the order and to order. and wait for him to be ready.

It is clear from the store's presentation and high-end presentation that, at least in San Francisco, Amazon is aggressively targeting gourmet grocery stores, coffee shops, lunch spots and pharmacies with its Go model. Stored at California Street contains just about everything you find in a 7-Eleven, with a small selection apparently hand-sorted from products that you will find more easily in a Walgreens, for example. For example, you can go to the Go store to buy a box of Pringles, or maybe a manicure stick, and choose from a fairly basic selection of cold medications. You can also buy bread, milk and cheese.

But the focus is more on fresh foods. The quality and selection of ready-to-eat foods are designed to be varied and competitive with respect to the choice of meals in a downtown downtown. Amazon has a team of workers and a complete kitchen at the back of the store. Every day, she produces fresh products for which you are ready to pay tailor-made prices. This includes sushi, breakfast burritos, salads and an assortment of sandwiches, including snacks, sweets and desserts.

The company has stored in the store more expensive ready-to-cook kits from its blue apron-style catering service, which were reserved for online orders until the launch of the first Go store, late 2016. Amazon also tied a partnership with local third parties. Festive restaurants, including La Boulangerie bakery and South Indian restaurant chain, Dosa, to beef up its inventory with pastries, yogurts, hummus and other options. She even partnered with a local chocolatier to make a San Francisco-based Amazon Go chocolate brand.

In the end, Amazon hopes that its cashier-free model will prove to be practical enough and that its selection of products and foods will be attractive enough to keep users away from the proven channels we are used to. The company is not necessarily trying to replace the 7-Elevens and Walgreens of the world, at least not yet. And a Go shop is far from fast and casual restaurants or traditional restaurants with counter service. At present, it seems that Go stores are a way for Amazon to become more involved in offline retail, as well as its physical bookstores in Seattle and New York and its acquired sites. Whole Foods give it a strategic footprint in groceries and paper books.

Picture of Nick Statt / The Verge

Of course, eventually, Amazon could use its Go model as a way to aggressively increase physical activity if the stores were particularly successful and able to handle large volumes of customers. Bloomberg announced in September that the company was planning to open thousands of sites over the next three years, which would constitute a remarkable escalation of rivalry from Amazon's offline retailers with Walmart, news channels, and more. grocery store and even the traditional restaurant and fast food industries.

We are not there yet. But Amazon is starting to go faster and is moving from an online trading giant to a real retail distribution company. The company has already planned to install its second site in San Francisco, located at 98 Post Street. It will be slightly smaller than the first and will open this winter, the company said. Meanwhile, in Chicago, Amazon will open its third Go Store at the Illinois Center in 2019. This will bring the total number of stores to eight, with at least one planned store in New York City in the next year.