Amazon is closing all Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go stores

Amazon said Tuesday that it will close all Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go stores to focus on same-day fresh grocery delivery, Supermarket News reports.

The Seattle-based retail giant will convert some Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go brick-and-mortar locations into Whole Foods Markets and plans to open more than 100 new stores over the next few years.

There are 58 Amazon Fresh stores and 16 Amazon Go locations, according to ScrapeHero. The first Amazon Fresh opening outside of Los Angeles in September 2020 while Amazon Go debuted in Seattle in 2018.

“While we’ve seen encouraging signals in our Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, we haven’t yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion,” the company said in a statement. “After careful evaluation of the business and how we can best serve customers, we’ve made the difficult decision to close our Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores.”

Amazon said it will continue testing new physical store experiences, including Amazon Grocery, which launched alongside a Whole Foods Market in Chicago, and a store-within-a-store concept at the Whole Foods Market in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania.

The company also plans to continue developing a mass physical store format and introduce new store concepts, including a supercenter-style retail model where customers can shop Amazon offerings in groceries, household essentials and general merchandise. Amazon plans to open its first 230,000-square-foot supercenter near Chicago late next year.

Amazon launched its same-day fresh grocery delivery service in August, announcing that customers in more than 1,000 cities and towns can order fresh groceries with same-day delivery. The company plans to expand the service to more than 2,300 locations across the U.S. by the end of 2025.

Amazon tested same-day delivery for perishables in areas including Phoenix; Orlando, Florida; and Kansas City, Missouri. The company found that first-time Amazon grocery shoppers who used same-day delivery returned to shop twice as often as those who did not purchase fresh food.