Amazon’s seventh checkout-free ‘Just Walk Out’ store is to open in Holborn, just 120 yards from Tesco’s first public checkout-free store, GetGo.
Tesco launched its own version of Amazon’s Just Walk Out shopping experience last month, retrofitting a Tesco Express with cameras on the ceiling and on-shelf weight sensors so customers can “walk right out” after selecting goods from the shelves.
Just as in Amazon Fresh stores – the last of which opened in Dalston in September – customers check in via app at the entrance and shop as normal before payment and receipts are “settled digitally” via the app.
Amazon confirmed to The Grocer that Holborn would be the location of its seventh UK frictionless Fresh store. Amazon Fresh fascia fittings were spotted being put up on the former Cotswold Outdoor store by Brunswick partner Tim Danaher.
The coming Amazon Fresh store is on the corner of High Holborn and Chancery Lane, over the road and less than a two-minute walk from the Tesco GetGo store.
Amazon’s London head office and Tesco’s London offices are both located nearby.
Tesco is working with Israeli startup Trigo, which is providing the technology behind its GetGo store. Tesco announced an equity investment in the company in 2019. Since 2019, Tesco has been testing the technology in a store at the supermarket’s Welwyn Garden City headquarters.
Still more Amazon Fresh stores – which utilise Amazon’s own proprietary tech – are expected in coming months “in the Greater London area” Amazon said.
Aldi is also set to launch a checkout-free store, in Greenwich, south east London. Morrisons is also working on a checkout-free store at its headquarters in Bradford.
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