Amazon is reportedly looking into launching a new grocery store business, one that would be distinctively different from its Whole Foods unit.

The stores are expected to be opened in major cities in the United States, with the first launching in Los Angeles before the end of the year, The Wall Street Journal reports. Leases have also reportedly been signed for two additional locations that would launch next year and the company is considering purchasing regional grocery chains that currently operate around a dozen stores.

The new grocery store, which may or may not operate under the Amazon name, would be able to carry a much wider variety of products that are sold at Whole Foods. Whole Foods stores require items that do not contain artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, and sweeteners, which prohibits a number of traditional grocery items from being sold in the stores.

Amazon purchased Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion. The store now offers deals for Amazon Prime members and offers free 2-hour delivery in a few cities.

Amazon has recently started rolling out Amazon Go stores across the country. The cashless stores allow customers to walk in, pick up items they would like to buy from the shelves, and simply walk out.</s>Amazon.com Inc. is planning to open dozens of grocery stores in several major U.S. cities, according to people familiar with the matter, as the retail giant looks to broaden its reach in the food business and touch more aspects of consumers’ lives.

The company plans to open its first outlet, in Los Angeles, as early as the end of the year, one person said. Amazon has already signed leases for at least two other grocery locations with openings planned for early next year, this person said, without saying where those stores...</s>Amazon.com Inc. plans to open dozens of grocery stores in U.S. 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 will open in Los Angeles as early as the end of 2019, and Amazon is in talks to open locations in shopping centers in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The company is also exploring the idea of purchasing regional grocery stores, the paper 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 said last year that the company planned to open as many as 3,000 of the so-far small-format stores, including up to 50 in 2019.

Amazon declined to comment on the Journal report.

Shares of food retailers all fell on the news. Kroger Co., the nation's 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 $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods signaled the company's intent to break into the $840 billion grocery market, but left it at a scale well below the likes of market leader Walmart Inc., which operates 4,750 grocery stores.

Some analysts saw Whole Foods, which stocks a limited selection of items in contrast to Amazon's preference for selling a wider range of items, as a starting point for Amazon in physical grocery retail. The company has since started delivering groceries from the shelves of Whole Foods locations across the U.S.</s>The company already owns Whole Foods.

Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, plans to open brick-and-mortar grocery stores in select cities in the United States, likely by the end of the year, The Guardian is reporting.

Reports emerged this week that the company, which already owns upscale grocer Whole Foods, is “in talks” with owners of shopping centers to open dozens of grocery stores in major U.S. cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. Already, the company hopes to have a store open in Los Angeles by the end of this year and has signed leases for two more stores to be open by early next year.

The Amazon grocery store is not expected to compete against Whole Foods, reports say. Whole Foods is an upscale grocer with high price points, putting it out of reach for many American consumers. It remains unclear if Amazon intends to mimic the Whole Foods strategy of offering expensive goods in an upscale environment, or if it plans to go after its biggest competitor, Walmart, in offering its products at discount prices.

Already, Walmart is preparing for the competition, according to an anonymous source within the company. Specifically, the company has been aware of Amazon’s plans for as much as two years and has been making moves to be able to counter the competition.

To that end, Walmart is not only moving things around to accommodate the competition but is also updating its purchase and delivery options to keep up with the changing ways in which customers shop. Specifically, the company plans to offer BOPIS (Buy Online Pick Up In Store) grocery shopping at 3,100 stores by January. Further, the company plans to increase the number of stores that provide delivery by 800, bringing the total number of Walmart stores across the country that have delivery options to about 1,600.

Meanwhile, it’s not just its own stores that Amazon plans to open. The company is also reportedly looking into purchasing smaller, regional grocery chains that operate at least a dozen stores. It remains unclear, as of this writing, if those stores will be rebranded under the Amazon brand, or will, like Whole Foods, retain their own names while owned by Amazon.

After over a decade dominating the online retail industry, Amazon in 2018 made the move into brick-and-mortar stores, seemingly bucking the trend of moving away from shopping done in a physical space. As Forbes reported in December 2018, there were several reasons for this, including allowing the retailer to move into the fashion game.</s>Amazon plans to open dozens of grocery stores across the United States as it looks to expand in the food business, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The company, which bought the upscale Whole Foods chain for $13.7bn in 2017, is now in talks to open grocery stores in shopping centers in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Washington DC and Philadelphia, the Journal report said.

The online retail giant plans to open its first store in Los Angeles as early as the end of the year, and has already signed leases for at least two other grocery locations with openings planned for early next year, the Journal reported.

The new stores were not intended to compete directly with Whole Foods, according to the report.

Amazon is also exploring strengthening its new supermarket brand by purchasing regional grocery chains that operate at least a dozen stores, according to the report.

Shares of grocers such as Walmart were down 0.99% while Costco traded up 0.21% . Kroger traded down over 4% and Amazon was up 1.68%.

Amazon rival Walmart, the largest grocer in the country, has not been caught off-guard by the news as it has been preparing for competition to heat up for nearly two years, according to a source with knowledge of the company’s business plans.

“Their [Amazon’s] ambitions in this space have been known for a long time,” the source said.

The prospect of more competition has spurred Walmart to action, the source said. Walmart will have grocery pickup service at 3,100 stores by next January, and offer grocery deliveries from about 800 more stores by the end of the year, bringing the total number of stores offering delivery service to 1,600 stores.</s>Here’s something none of us expected to read today: The reports that Amazon is planning to launch a new line of grocery stores. Yes, I’m writing this in 2019. Yes, Amazon still owns Whole Foods. Yes, Amazon is still rolling out its small, cashier-free Amazon Go convenience stores. These stores would be another group of supermarkets — because apparently now that Amazon has gotten a taste of brick and mortar, they just can’t get enough of the stuff!

The as-of-now unnamed stores would be larger than Amazon Go stores, but only about half the size of a typical supermarket — with the ’s anonymous source clarifying that though Amazon has already secured some leases, these stores are still not guaranteed to open. Meanwhile, the new supermarkets would theoretically offer a broader range of products than Whole Foods — which, despite Amazon’s buyout, still holds on to many of its upmarket grocer ideals like no preservatives or artificial sweeteners.

These stores are planned for “dozens” of major American cities, according to the , with the first one slated to open in Los Angeles as soon as by the end of this year. They’ll reportedly be separate from Whole Foods though whether they’ll have Amazon branding wasn’t clear. The source also suggested that Amazon could once again take an acquisition approach, but only by snatching up smaller regional grocery stores that could quickly be brought under the Amazon umbrella.

Of course, we can debate the merits of these new stores when (and if) they open, but for now, you have to wonder what this means for Whole Foods. Clearly, it could be a good sign, especially in the short term, because it shows that Amazon is apparently unwilling to degrade the upmarket chain’s standards to fit all of its needs. But what about the long term? Would Amazon really want to be operating multiple grocery chains with different branding? And if they create their own new chain from scratch, wouldn’t that seem to trump an existing brand created by a couple of hippies they didn’t even know? Clearly, it’s all speculation at this point, but Amazon is certainly once again giving us plenty to speculate about.</s>Amazon reportedly feels confident enough in its grocery-store quests to branch out into new ventures. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Amazon plans to open dozens of new grocery stores that will be distinctly different than the company's Whole Foods Market stores. The retail giant has reportedly already signed leases for some locations and plans to open the new grocery stores in cities across the country, including San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington DC.

But the first city to get a new Amazon grocery store will be Los Angeles. The report claims that Amazon will open that store by the end of this year. Although Amazon has some leases signed already, it doesn't guarantee that the company will open stores in all of those leased locations.

It appears Amazon wants to grab a larger sector of the market by offering a wider variety of items in these new grocery stores than it currently offers at Whole Foods locations. Although the grocer has expanded its offerings since Amazon bought it back in 2017 for $13.7 billion, Whole Foods is generally considered an upper-scale grocery store chain and it continues to have strict food quality standards for the items it carries (no artificial flavor, colors, preservatives, sweeteners, etc).

Aside from the fact that Amazon plans to open some stores this year, little is known about the intended layout. Reportedly, Amazon is looking to open in locations that are smaller than typical grocery stores—35,000 square feet instead of 60,000 square feet. The Wall Street Journal's report also claims Amazon is looking into an "acquisition strategy" for purchasing smaller, local grocery store chains in order to more quickly expand its own plans.

This move continues Amazon's push not only into the grocery industry, but into the brick-and-mortar space as a whole. Amazon's physical store locations, grocery-focused or otherwise, are dwarfed by those of other companies like Walmart and Target (both of which have been experimenting with tactics to compete with the online retail giant). Amazon clearly has its online retail business on lock, and now it likely wants to get a better grasp on how people shop in stores by opening more of its own locations across the country.

Amazon almost immediately brought changes to Whole Foods after the acquisition. It instituted special sales and discounts for Prime members and it continued to expand its grocery delivery and pickup services with the help of those additional physical stores. Whole Foods has been key to Amazon's come-up in the grocery space, and it's likely that Amazon's investment in the chain will not slow down even in light of this new venture. As recently as this week, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has publicly trumpeted the partnership as an overall positive.

These new plans come as Amazon continues to roll out new Go cashierless stores across the country as well. Currently, there are Amazon Go stores located on Seattle, San Francisco, and Chicago. It's unclear if Amazon intends for its new grocery stores to be cashierless, but the new locations will give the company another avenue to test out such technology if it chooses to do so.</s>com Inc plans to open dozens of grocery stores across the United States as it looks to expand in the food business, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

is also exploring a strategy of strengthening its new supermarket brand by purchasing regional that operate at least a dozen stores, according to the report.

Shares of grocers such as were down 0.99 percent while Costco traded up 0.21 percent up. Kroger traded down over 4 percent. was up 1.68 percent.

Amazon, which bought the upscale Whole Foods chain for $13.7 billion in 2017, is now in talks to open grocery stores in shopping centres in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, the WSJ report said.

The online retail giant plans to open its first store in Los Angeles as early as the end of the year, and has already signed leases for at least two other grocery locations with openings planned for early next year, the Journal reported.

The new stores were not intended to compete directly with Whole Foods, according to the report.

"We're not surprised," said David Bujnicki, in charge of investor relations at Kimco Realty Corp , an owner or manager of 437 mostly grocery-anchored shopping centres.

Amazon is slow but deliberate when rolling out new brick and mortar concepts, he said. He added that a new grocer would validate the need for physical stores, a business that has been hit hard by e-commerce, whose surge Amazon has led.

Amazon rival Walmart, the largest grocer in the country, has not been caught off guard as it has been preparing for competition to heat up for nearly two years, according to a source with knowledge of the company's business plans.

"Their (Amazon's) ambitions in this space have been known for a long time," the source said.

The prospect of more competition has spurred to action, the source said. will have grocery pickup service at 3,100 stores by next January, and offer grocery deliveries from about 800 more stores by the end of the year, bringing the total number of stores offering delivery service to 1,600 stores.</s>Two years after making a surprise acquisition of Whole Foods, Amazon is about to go even deeper into the grocery business by launching a completely new chain of its own. One that’s separate from Whole Foods and with prices that reportedly would undercut Whole Foods, notorious for its expensive premium items.

That news comes via The Wall Street Journal, and marks Amazon’s continued push into the real world of brick-and-mortar retail, with Amazon’s presence now including everything from physical book shops to convenience stores.

What we know so far: Amazon’s ambition here is to launch a new chain with “dozens” of stores, starting with one in Los Angeles that could open as early as this year. Other markets that have apparently caught the retail giant’s interest for this include San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, DC, and Philadelphia. In some markets, it’s more than “interest,” since Amazon has reportedly already started quietly signing leases related to this effort.

The locations would be smaller than your typical 60,000-square-foot store, measuring closer to around 35,000 square feet, according to the WSJ’s reporting. Related to this is the possibility that Amazon is apparently also considering outright buying up a regional grocery chain or two.

The Whole Foods angle here is certainly intriguing, given the assumption that Amazon’s acquisition of it was the company’s entry point into the space, albeit a surprising one. Amazon of course gave no indication it would consider launching a cheaper version of its own later — which is how this will be seen, though the unofficial comments at this stage point to the new grocery chain not being intended as a direct competitor to Whole Foods.

Yes, it will offer cheaper goods, but will also reportedly include a different product mix than Whole Foods’. One thing that’s not clear is whether the new chain will include some kind of Amazon-specific branding, or if the company will come up with a new name for it. And, no surprise, Amazon isn’t commenting on any of this yet.

As we mentioned, this is one more complement to the increasingly real-world portion of Amazon’s vast retail portfolio, which also includes a rollout of cashier-free Amazon Go stores. There are currently 10 of those, according to the company.</s>Amazon.com plans to open dozens of grocery stores in U.S. 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 will open in Los Angeles as early as the end of 2019, and Amazon is in talks to open locations in shopping centers in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The company is also exploring the idea of purchasing regional grocery stores, the paper 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.

Shares of food retailers all fell on the news. Kroger Co., the nation’s 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 announces plans to open dozens of proprietary grocery stores in several major U.S. cities.