- Amazon recently opened its first brick-and-mortar grocery store in Seattle, Washington.
- The store does not use cashiers. Shoppers instead scan their phones at turnstiles, and Amazon charges them automatically.
- Amazon said the new store will not accept food stamps for the foreseeable future. An expert says Amazon is ignoring a large population of potential shoppers.
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Amazon is missing out on a multimillion-dollar opportunity with its new grocery store of the future
Amazon's first physical grocery store does not accept food stamps in Seattle. Yet over 88,000 residents rely on SNAP, which totals $98.8 million worth of food.
Amazon pitches its new Go store in Seattle as the supermarket of the future.
The store does not feature cashiers or checkout lines. Instead, a sensor-and-camera system detects when shoppers pick items off the shelves, and Amazon charges them automatically via an app when they leave.
In January, Slate's April Glaser noted another glaring difference between Amazon Go and most traditional supermarkets. The former does not accept food stamps (also known as EBT cards) that are part of the federal
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Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. Since some of these SNAP recipients could theoretically be shopping at the Amazon Go store, Lynn considers that a missed market opportunity.
When asked about the decision to not accept food stamps, the Amazon spokesperson said federal law would not allow the company to do so in its Go store.
Amazon declined to say if it plans to launch more Go locations. If the company decided to expand outside Seattle, it opens the door to even more SNAP opportunity. Nationwide, the federal government spends about $73 billion on the program every year.
"If [Amazon Go] becomes a model across the grocery industry, and food stamps weren’t accepted, that would indeed be alarming," said Mark Coleman of Food Lifeline, a nonprofit that works with SNAP recipients in Western Washington.
"We're going to have to continue to work together to bring fresh food to communities who need it most," she said. "It's not just going to be one company. We need to change the entire food ecosystem, because in the past two to three decades, it has become so industrialized and broken."
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