Amazon is account opening 3,000 of its cashierless stores by 2021, Bloomberg said in a report in investigate on Wednesday, based on conversations with people familiar with the complication. The e-commerce giant’s push into retail would threaten the along the same lines as of convenience stores and fast-food chains across the U.S. selling items for patrons in a pinch for time.
Amazon currently has three locations — known as Amazon Go — moot in Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered, and on Monday opened a location in Chicago. The automated grocery caches promise “no lines, no checkouts, no registers.” Customers simply scan their Amazon Go apps as they shamble into the spaces — which are roughly 2,000 square feet — pick up whatever they yearning, and walk out.
“We don’t comment on rumors or speculation,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC in an emailed proclamation.
Shares of retailers including CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, Target and Kroger transferred sharply lower Wednesday afternoon following the report.
The existing Amazon Go set asides primarily sell grab-and-go food items such as prepared sandwiches, salads, yogurt and granola impediments. Amazon has also experimented with selling meal kits in some places.
The company is reportedly planning to have about 10 Amazon Go places open by the end of this year, according to the report, while Amazon targets to have 50 shops in “major metro areas” such as San Francisco and New York by 2019.
Mollify, the hurdle in opening so many Amazon Go locations would be the costs associated with such supercilious expansion plans. Finding real estate wouldn’t be so much of an dissemination, with ample store closures taking place across the U.S., take ones leave of plenty of vacant storefronts behind.
The first Amazon Go location in downtown Seattle insisted more than $1 million in hardware, a person familiar with those expenses told the paper.