Why it matters: Amazon's cashier-free Go stores are a neat concept but it'll be interesting to see whether or not Amazon can demonstrate the effectiveness of the model at scale, especially once the novelty wears off.
Amazon's fourth cashier-less convenience store - and the first outside of its hometown of Seattle, Washington, is now open for business.
The new Amazon Go storefront is located at 113 S Franklin Street in Chicago, Illinois. According to Amazon's store locator, it's open from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. Oddly enough, the store isn't open on the weekends when you'd expect lots of foot traffic. Perhaps that will change once the store has been open for a few months.
The new Chicago location stocks your typical fare of breakfast, lunch and dinner meal kits as well as an array of snacks. It's unclear if the store offers beer and wine.
Amazon's store of the future uses a combination of computer vision, sensor fusion and deep learning to create what the company calls Just Walk Out Technology. In short, it allows shoppers to walk in, pick up items off the shelf and simply walk out with them - the tab is billed to directly to your Amazon account.
Amazon's first cashier-less store opened to the public in Seattle this past January and there are plans to bring the concept to Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York by the end of the year.