Report: Two Amazon Grocery Stores To Open In Washington, DC Area

Two brick-and-mortar Amazon grocery stores are near opening in the Washington, D.C. region. The retailer unveiled plans to bring part-time and full-time workers onboard at the locations, WTOP reported.

One location is close to opening in the Franconia area of suburban Virginia, while another store is near opening in the Logan Circle area of the District of Columbia, WTOP reported. An Amazon representative confirmed the locations to WTOP but would not say when the stores would open or identify their format.

The Logan Circle store will be branded as Amazon Go, according to WTOP, which cited the Washington Business Journal, while the Franconia store will be branded as Amazon Fresh.

As it stands, Amazon has two physical bookstores in the District of Columbia region, WTOP reported. They are located in Bethesda and Georgetown. Moreover, Amazon has four Amazon Fresh locations in the vicinity of Chicago and eight Amazon Fresh supermarkets in California.

As PYMNTS reported in August, Amazon was set to open a Los Angeles supermarket that would showcase the next generation shopping cart.

At the time, it was noted that the Woodland Hills Amazon Fresh store was the first of seven supermarkets that Amazon had in the works for California and Greater Chicago. Shoppers were to get a look at the “Dash Cart,” which lets them choose and fill two supermarket bags and skip checkout lines via a special lane.

Even though it might have the appearance of a usual shopping cart, it uses cameras, sensors and a display screen that monitors orders and takes the amount due from a connected credit card.

As PYMNTS previously noted, grocery is a very large retail segment, with $658.1 billion in annual sales projected for this year.

Even so, its growth as an industry has been mostly flat since approximately 2016 — an average annualized growth of 0.5 percent from 2016 to 2020. Grocery stores fight hard for the consumer’s share of the wallet in their local markets.