3 NYC Amazon Go stores close

Dive Brief:

• Amazon closed three of its Amazon Go locations in New York City on Sept. 27, a company spokesperson confirmed on Monday.
• The tech giant said the leases for these locations were coming up for renewal and Amazon decided the costs were too high.
• Although Amazon closed these three locations, Amazon Go opened a new store in Bellevue, Washington, on July 31.

Dive Insight:

While Amazon Go is not growing as Amazon once hoped, the company is not giving up on its automated c-store banner just yet. However, business realities have resulted in a spate of store closures stretching back to last year. 

“When a lease comes up for renewal, it is standard business practice for retailers to evaluate their store portfolio and decide if it is best to renew or to close the location,” an Amazon spokesperson wrote in an email. “In this case, while these three stores were performing well, we couldn’t make the economics work with the lease cost, so we’ve decided not to renew and have closed these locations.”

The shuttered stores, which like all Amazon Go locations featured the company’s Just Walk Out automated checkout technology, were located at 11 West 42nd St., One Liberty and 30 Rockefeller Center. Amazon is working to find new roles for affected employees within the company. 

Stores at 200 Vesey St. and 150 E. 53rd St. in New York City are still in operation. Currently, Amazon Go has 17 stores in operation in the U.S., according to its website.

As Amazon works to find the right mix of brick-and-mortar stores and the right technology for those locations, it has ramped up efforts to expand on the number of third-party locations using its Just Walk Out system. 

In August, the company revealed an advanced AI model that it says will make the system more accurate, more efficient and less costly to implement.

Amazon is also partnering with universities and stadiums to incorporate the tech in small stores where customers are looking to get in and out fast.

Schools added Just Walk Out technology to 10 new campus c-stores around the start of this year’s fall semester. Sodexo announced on Monday that it is one of the companies involved in that campus c-store expansion, working with the tech firm on stores in Endicott College; the University of Maine, Orono; Lindenwood University; and Seattle Pacific University.

There are now more than 190 third-party locations using Just Walk Out worldwide.