Amazon will open new grocery stores separate from Whole Foods, report says
Amazon is about to move even deeper into the grocery store business.
The retail giant plans to open several new physical grocery stores that would be entirely separate from Whole Foods, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal.
The first location will reportedly be in Los Angeles and could open this year. The company is also "in talks to open grocery stores in shopping centers in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia," according to the WSJ. The company may also acquire additional grocery chains to bolster the new, unnamed, brand.
Amazon declined to comment.
The new grocery stores would reportedly offer a bigger selection of items than Whole Foods, and "the company doesn’t want restrictions on the type of goods it may sell," the Wall Street Journal reports.
Such a move would mark a significant expansion of Amazon's physical retail footprint. The company already own the Whole Foods chain, and runs Amazon book stores and chashier-less Amazon Go stores. But the fact that Amazon is looking to sell a wider range of products, and may be eyeing former Kmart locations, suggests the company is hoping its new grocery brand will have more of a mass market appeal than Whole Foods.
Topics Amazon
Karissa was Mashable's Senior Tech Reporter, and is based in San Francisco. She covers social media platforms, Silicon Valley, and the many ways technology is changing our lives. Her work has also appeared in Wired, Macworld, Popular Mechanics, and The Wirecutter. In her free time, she enjoys snowboarding and watching too many cat videos on Instagram. Follow her on Twitter @karissabe.
