Amazon.com Inc plans to open dozens of grocery stores in US cities, the Wall Street Journal reported, a move that would expand the retail and technology giant’s grocery footprint beyond its Whole Foods Market chain.
The first of these stores is to open in Los Angeles as early as the end of this year, and Amazon is in talks to open locations in shopping centers in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Washington and Philadelphia, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The company is also exploring the idea of purchasing regional grocery stores, the newspaper said.
The Seattle-based company, which has been experimenting with online delivery of groceries for more than a decade, got into brick-and-mortar food retail with its 2017 purchase of Whole Foods. Amazon has also expanded Amazon Go, its cashierless convenience store concept, to 10 stores.
People familiar with the matter last year said that the company planned to open as many as 3,000 of the so-far small-format stores, including up to 50 this year.
Amazon declined to comment on the Wall Street Journal report.
Shares of food retailers all fell on the news. Kroger Co, the US’ biggest traditional grocery chain, dropped as much as 6.4 percent, while Walmart Inc and Costco Wholesale Corp also declined. Target Corp, which gets about 25 percent of its sales from food, also fell before recouping its losses.
Amazon’s US$13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods signaled the company’s intent to break into the US$840 billion grocery market, but left it at a scale well below the likes of market leader Walmart, which operates 4,750 grocery stores.
UNCERTAINTY: Innolux activated a stringent supply chain management mechanism, as it did during the COVID-19 pandemic, to ensure optimal inventory levels for customers Flat-panel display makers AUO Corp (友達) and Innolux Corp (群創) yesterday said that about 12 to 20 percent of their display business is at risk of potential US tariffs and that they would relocate production or shipment destinations to mitigate the levies’ effects. US tariffs would have a direct impact of US$200 million on AUO’s revenue, company chairman Paul Peng (彭雙浪) told reporters on the sidelines of the Touch Taiwan trade show in Taipei yesterday. That would make up about 12 percent of the company’s overall revenue. To cope with the tariff uncertainty, AUO plans to allocate its production to manufacturing facilities in
Taiwan will prioritize the development of silicon photonics by taking advantage of its strength in the semiconductor industry to build another shield to protect the local economy, National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) said yesterday. Speaking at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee, Liu said Taiwan already has the artificial intelligence (AI) industry as a shield, after the semiconductor industry, to safeguard the country, and is looking at new unique fields to build more economic shields. While Taiwan will further strengthen its existing shields, over the longer term, the country is determined to focus on such potential segments as
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors
RSS