A handful of Amazon Go stores will soon be gone in three major cities.
Amazon has identified the cities where it plans to close Amazon Go stores, eight locations of the high-tech cashierless convenience stores, including four in San Francisco and two each in Seattle and New York.
Last month Amazon announced another pullback on its brick-and-mortar expansion, shuttering some of its Amazon Fresh supermarkets and halting the chain's rollout, as well as saying it planned to shutter a number of its Amazon Go convenience stores. And in March last year, the Seattle-based e-commerce juggernaut pulled the plug on 68 stores representing three chains, namely its Amazon 4-star, Amazon Pop Up and Amazon Books locations in the United States and Great Britain.
The actual cities where the first Amazon Go stores will be closing, and the number, were first reported by Geekwire on Friday. Amazon confirmed the closings in an email to CoStar News on Monday.
“Like any physical retailer, we periodically assess our portfolio of stores and make optimization decisions along the way,” an Amazon spokeswoman said. “In this case, we’ve decided to close a small number of Amazon Go stores in Seattle, New York City and San Francisco. We remain committed to the Amazon Go format, operate more than 20 Amazon Go stores across the U.S., and will continue to learn which locations and features resonate most with customers as we keep evolving our Amazon Go stores.”
The Amazon Go stores in Seattle, both located near the former Macy’s building at Third Avenue and Pine Street, had actually already closed and that move will be permanent. But there are other Amazon Go stores in the greater Seattle area. The stores closing in New York are at Maiden Lane and Pearl Street, as well as Park Avenue South.
The stores being shuttered will close April 1 and will continue to operate as normal to serve customers until that time.
Amazon plans to continue to open new Amazon Go stores, recently debuting one in Puyallup, Washington.