Amazon has been trying to reinvent the way people buy groceries for 17 years. But unlike e-commerce or cloud computing, the tech giant hasn’t figured out how to disrupt this industry.
That’s our takeaway after trying three different approaches to shopping this week inside an Amazon Fresh grocery store in Seattle. We went through the store three times, with the same 10-item shopping list, to test the “Just Walk Out” cashierless technology, the Amazon Dash Cart, and the old-fashioned checkout line.
The goal was to determine which method was fastest and most seamless.
The winner of our experiment: the technology that Amazon is moving away from in these stores. Our least-favorite option: the approach that Amazon is betting on.
Our conclusion: We’re not quite sure what Amazon is doing here.
The two high-tech approaches have been around for a while, but it’s a timely moment to compare them. Amazon plans to stop offering “Just Walk Out” in most of its large-format Amazon Fresh grocery stores, and will instead focus on the company’s Dash Carts, The Information reported last week.
- “Just Walk Out” uses cameras and sensors to track what you pick up, then charges you automatically as you leave (by scanning a code in the Amazon app, or using the Amazon One palm-scanning technology). Just Walk out debuted in 2018 at an Amazon Go convenience store before expanding to other stores.
- Amazon’s Dash Cart features built-in sensors and scanners that let shoppers register items as they place them in the cart. A built-in screen tracks and totals your purchases as you go. The smart cart debuted in 2020 at Amazon Fresh grocery stores, and has since expanded to some Whole Foods stores. Other companies including Instacart and Seattle startup Veeve have rolled out similar smart carts.
We used the same grocery list — a mix of fruit, veggies, beef, chips, paper towels, and canned cocktails — each time we went through the store in our experiment Monday evening at the Amazon Fresh on Aurora Avenue in Seattle.
This store still has “Just Walk Out” in operation, along with the Dash Carts, giving us a chance to try each digitally enhanced experience, and compare it to traditional grocery shopping. Here’s what we found:
- “Just Walk Out” is the most seamless way to shop here, faster than the other two options by a significant amount. We were left wondering why Amazon is moving away from this option at these stores.
- Dash Carts were the most frustrating option, and didn’t save us much time. We found the process of scanning and entering items into the high-tech shopping cart to be clunky, inconsistent, and difficult to navigate.
- Traditional shopping — using a non-digital cart and paying at the cashier — was the easiest and most simple option. It did take more time, including a few minutes waiting in line at the cashier’s station.
We’ve both used the Dash Cart multiple times before at Amazon grocery stores, so we knew the basics of operating these smart carts, and still found the process and the technology cumbersome.
Produce was especially difficult to deal with. Depending on the item, it was unclear whether we should use the built-in scanners on their barcodes, or enter items manually via a product code on the Dash Cart screen. In some cases, as with a package of blueberries, we gave up trying to scan and just fell back to entering the code manually.
If we picked up one of the fabric shopping bags in our cart to place an item inside, a built-in scale sensed the small change in weight and flashed a warning on the screen, asking what we had removed, requiring us to clear the message, and repeatedly making us feel as if we had done something wrong.
When we went to leave via the “Amazon Dash Cart Lane,” with a Cutwater Spirits Vodka Mule four-pack in our cart, the system flagged a nearby attendant to confirm our ID, even though he had already done that when we went through the alcohol aisle. His app froze, adding an extra minute or so to the process of leaving the store.
On the plus side, the proximity sensors in the Dash Cart were convenient, displaying on the screen the items that were nearby in the store at any given moment, and making it easier to identify products.
Another nice feature is the ability to access your Alexa shopping list on the screen, after scanning a code in the Amazon app at the beginning to connect with your Amazon account. However, the Dash Cart didn’t automatically cross items off the list after we scanned them into the cart, which seemed like a missed opportunity.
No doubt some of the issues we encountered were the result of user error. A more experienced Dash Cart user could probably show us a few tricks to improve things, and more experience with the routine of adding items would help.
We also understand that budget-conscious shoppers like being able to track their total spending on the screen as they go through the store, and that’s another appeal of the Dash Cart in those cases.
But the learning curve seems like too much, especially given the alternative.
After grabbing a regular green grocery cart from beneath the Just Walk Out sign inside the entrance to the store, we simply walked around and put the 10 items in the cart — no scanning, manual entry, or error messages involved. We went to a Just Walk Out lane, scanned the code in our Amazon app, and we were done in less than 9 minutes.
That compared to about 12 minutes with the Dash Cart, and about 14 minutes with the traditional method of shopping, using a regular grocery cart and standing in line while a cashier checked us out.
One important caveat on these times: We shopped the traditional way first, then used the Dash Cart, and finished with Just Walk Out. As we went, we got more efficient with our shopping, knowing where each item was. But we also consciously slowed ourselves down to adjust for this during the Just Walk Out portion of the experiment
In the end, any advantage from this factor probably amounted to less than a minute. For us, there was simply no question that Just Walk Out was simply a more convenient and faster way to shop for groceries.
There are surely other factors going into Amazon’s decision. The cameras, sensors, and other tech infrastructure required for Just Walk Out in these large stores is extensive, and no doubt costly. The array of overhead equipment can make shopping in an Amazon Fresh grocery store feel more like participating in a lab experiment.
Even with all that gear, it has been no small feat for Amazon to realize the vision of cashierless technology in these big stores. However, Amazon has disputed reports that it relies on a large group of workers in India to manually review transactions and label images to train the machine learning models that power Just Walk Out.
In conjunction with the shift away from Just Walk Out in large-format grocery stores, Amazon Web Services last week said it was laying off a few hundred employees in its identity and checkout teams within its Physical Stores Technology organization, as part of broader cutbacks in the company’s cloud division.
Dilip Kumar, vice president of AWS applications, told employees in a memo that Amazon is still expanding its identity and checkout technologies in its small-format stores, and going into more third-party locations.
“We’ve learned a lot through the launch of identity and checkout technologies in our large format Amazon Fresh stores, and have good customer feedback to inform our plans going forward,” Kumar wrote. He added, “I am proud of the innovations we have led for customers, as the teams continue to push the boundaries of what is possible by providing a seamless identity and checkout experience for customers.”
Here’s hoping they’ve got something better than the current Dash Cart in the works.
