Fresh out of ideas, Amazon pulls its latest bait-and-bail

By ZELORY GREGLER //

So Amazon has canceled plans for a new Amazon Fresh supermarket in Farmingville, after building out the place and everything. Color me stunned.

Actually, don’t – this non-opening was as predictable as price hikes in Tariffland.

Late last year, shortly after the Seattle-based e-commerce giant filled the East Setauket footprint of a long-closed Waldbaum’s with a new Amazon Fresh, Mrs. Gregler and I went to check it out. (Yes, Jesse Watters, I’m that kind of man, you drooling troglodyte.)

There are plenty of supermarket options closer to our home base, but we calculated that an extra 10-minute car ride would be worth it, if cost savings were to be found inside this next-generation marvel. In a house with an ever-shifting rotation of four grown children, $300 weekly grocery tabs are common and every penny counts.

So off we went, grocery list in hand, west on Route 347 to East Setauket.

Red Flag No. 1 was waving before we even entered the store: The parking lot was empty, on a bright and sunny Saturday afternoon. This was no optical illusion – inside we found a slightly-above-average produce section, neatly stocked aisles and virtually no customers.

The second warning sign was the much-ballyhooed “smart cart” – or Dash Cart, as the next-gen grocer brands them.

Amazon first opened cashier-less grocery stores in 2020, and four years later replaced its vaunted Just Walk Out technology in its U.S. stores with these computerized carts, which display a running tab while you shop.

They do so by scanning items as you place them in the basket; our cart packed three different scanners, plus digital scales sensitive enough to know exactly how many avocados you picked and confirm that you actually scanned that loaf of bread. There’s also a large touchscreen that can be toggled to display a store map, check prices, list weekly sales, etc.

Understandably, the tech-heavy carts are huge; back in the parking lot, the one we grabbed had a case of Dasani water sitting on its lower shelf, obviously unseen and forgotten by a previous shopper. We both noted that older folks – Mrs. Gregler’s parents, for instance – wouldn’t be dashing anywhere, but struggling just to push the thing.

And while there are plenty of tech-savvy seniors out there, the in-laws would also find the scanners and touchscreen controls befuddling. Simply logging in with an app-based Amazon store code – required to access the Dash Cart’s higher functions – would be tough.

Me, I appreciate a shopping cart that requires a user’s manual. But in the moment, I found myself questioning the business sense of challenging such a large market segment.

I digress. Space-age shopping carts are swell and all, but we were there to save money – bringing us to the third and most significant caution in this cautionary tale: The prices were outrageous.

At ShopRite, in addition to the popular brands you know and love, you’ll find Bowl & Basket, a high-quality house brand that cuts prices but not quality. (I’ll take Bowl & Basket English muffins over Thomas’ any day … not only are they cheaper, they’re larger and actually split down the middle, giving you two solid halves, instead of the hefty bottom and half-shredded top you get with the marquee brand.)

Rival Stop & Shop offers numerous house brands – Smart Living, Nature’s Promise, CareOne and others – all with one important commonality: lower prices than their name-brand counterparts. (For the record, someone in Stop & Shop’s marketing department deserves a massive raise; creating not one but half-a-dozen generic brands creates a sense of choice, something shoppers desire almost as much as lower prices.)

But strolling Amazon Fresh’s shiny, well-lit aisles, we found very few house-brand options. We got a good deal on an Amazon-branded bottle of Happy Belly bay leaves (just $1.57 for a quarter-ounce) and scored five boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese for $5, but unless the product we sought happened to be on sale … well, that Dash Cart was dinging up fast.

Amazon wised up last September. With the national election looming and grocery prices clearly concerning consumers, it introduced Amazon Saver, a no-frills house brand with most items priced under $5 (Prime members enjoy an additional 10 percent off).

More than 100 items were ultimately projected to be included under the Amazon Saver umbrella. But in November at the East Setauket Amazon Fresh, they were few and far between.

In addition to $11 boxes of cereal, we were also surprised to find limited meat and poultry options, and no great savings there, either.

Leaving the store was, as advertised, a pleasant breeze: The Dash Cart weighed things accurately, we’d packed as we went and Mrs. Gregler is a beautiful techno-goddess, so paying through her Amazon app was no problem.

But as we tallied the damage, considered the limited selection and digested the Dash Cart experience, we both reached the same conclusion, summed up beautifully by my better half.

“There’s no reason to ever go there again,” she said.

So, considering the half-progressive tech and the high prices and the basically customer-less store we explored last fall, am I stunned that Amazon has canceled its Amazon Fresh plans in Farmingville?

Even after the 35,053-square-foot North Ocean Avenue property was renovated for that precise purpose? Even as Amazon Freshes continue to propagate elsewhere? Even as high-end rival Wegmans Food Markets prepares to open its first Long Island location?

No, I am not.

Not only has Amazon danced this two-step before, but innovation is a tricky thing. Bigger isn’t always better. Faster isn’t always better. And technology at the expense of humanity is never better – skipping checkout lines sounds brilliant, but with national employment numbers fluctuating and prices soaring, is eliminating cashiers that important?

“The more they overthink the plumbing,” a wise Scottish engineer once told us, “the easier it is to stop up the drain.” With that, please excuse me – I’m gonna dash over to Uncle Giuseppe’s for some of that delish eggplant parm.

Zelory “Celery” Gregler has been cooking for most of his life, and eating for all of it.