The current trend in search interest for “amazon fresh” is primarily driven by recent news about Amazon’s decision to shutter all Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores. This significant move by Amazon signals a substantial shift in its grocery retail strategy, prompting many consumers, industry analysts, and competitors to seek information on the implications of this closure.
Additionally, linked articles highlighting Amazon Prime perks have surfaced amidst the announcement of these store closures. This juxtaposition of topics could have led individuals to explore more about Amazon’s offerings and ongoing changes in its retail landscape, elevating search volumes as people look for clarification and details on the situation.
The abrupt closures of these stores have created a sense of urgency among consumers and stakeholders eager to understand the future of Amazon’s grocery services. Consequently, there’s a spike in searches as individuals seek to gather insights into what this means for product availability, potential shifts in pricing strategies, and the overall grocery market dynamics influenced by Amazon’s decisions.
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Internet Reacts
T
Wild. They just spent a bunch of money remodeling the one near my house.
S
Management culture at Amazon has less than 0 outlook for long term thinking. This is the tip of the iceberg of utterly ridiculous wastes of money I’ve heard. All major corps do this, but Amazon especially is insane. Everyone is out to screw everyone else for short term gains before peacing out.
D
This, sadly, is true. I can vouch for this as well. And it’s such a pisser when it’s followed by layoffs. All that money that was wasted a quarter or two ago could have kept those people employed. (Which Amazon really does not care about.)
S
My friend worked on a program that they were actively developing, but they decided to lay off the entire working team, testers, and technicians and left only a few managers and lead engineers. Several months later the dumbass upper management came back wondering why no progress was being accomplished on this program. The few people left were like you laid everyone off you dolts. My friend gets a call that they’re going to rehire everyone because they realized they screwed up. He gets into a meeting with an NPC HR person telling him all the cheery benefits of working at Amazon. Look at your big bonus you’ll get when you’re vested after being with us a year! He stops them right there and is like STFU you guys laid me off before I got that last time Lose all these stupid useless benefits, and give me a 50% pay raise because that’s all I’m here for. They accepted it. Then laid him and team off again about two years later 😂 Probably all for the best. The program was poisoned after the layoffs. Everyone from the engineers to the project management was disallusioned and knew they’d be fired the second they met the goals of the project. They were actively fudging their personal performance metrics so everyone could stay working. After the first layoff they stole all the office equipment which had never been properly catalogged by IT (the IT was also all fired too so…) with each employee making off with chairs, desks, monitors, and even computers worth thousands (dude had a great office setup). They worked together to throw off and delay milestones so there would always be more work to complete. Purposefully making a shitty product that wouldn’t actually compete in the marketplace. The suits in charge were so distant from the project and never engaged enough to notice. The PMs in the corporate office were all after vanity projects to get them boosts in the Amazon pecking order. And that’s probably one of three stories I’ve heard like that from friends who worked there 😅
F
100 true, except that PMs, PPMs, and Lead Eng *are* corporate. Your friends make themselves seem as if they’re not complicit in the system, as if they’re not also holding on as long as possible to suckle from the golden teat. I worked there too, witnessed the Bezo-Jassy shuffle and own the selfishness of being part of a company rapidly enshittify itself from the inside because *I personally wanted* financial stability. It’s reality and your friends took what they could get and got out, same as me. All of it off the backs of logistic workers and outsourced coworkers in Costa Rica and India who were always laid off first. Now, I wasn’t in either prod or pgm dev and spent my time squeezing other major corporations, instead of coworkers but still, I’m not a victim and neither are your (very financially comfortable if they were fiscally responsible) friends. I’m burnt out and disillusioned so I apologize for the crass tone. The whole US capitalist system has been corrupted and it all needs to change via fair taxes. Hopefully your friends can change their tone, realize the part we take in this, and vote, donate, and partake in current efforts to make US a more equitable place to live.
S
Yeah, I mean they were extremely transparent that they were just there for the short term money and then getting out. That it was an unsustainable situation on every level but if you’re offered 300k to do something in a benign department there then you take the money and run after a few years. I totally get it. It put the down payment on their houses in world where most of us can’t afford one. They’ve all since moved on to better things and tell people to stay away from Amazon haha But it is pathetic. Everyone can make great money and keep things sustainable. My dad worked for Boeing back in the 80s, made great dough, and had a blast. But he bailed in 95 as the MD merger management changes rapidly started fucking everyone over. It’s been a mad dash race to the bottom everywhere.
F
I clearly did the same and don’t fault anyone who chooses some level of financial stability in a time where inequity is everywhere and horrible. It’s the distance they place from and lack of ownership of their place in it. It’s not “Ugh **those** evil overlords”, it’s “Ugh, I hate **being part of evil** and needing to exchange my soul for stability.” Delusions are the enemy of solutions and this country needs solutions from people who can afford to contribute time, money, or votes.
K
Isn’t one of their leadership principles about being frugal? 🤔
M
This. It’s all about getting promoted, “taking ownership” of some new brand or initiative, and destroying what the person before you did.
S
Yeah, they absolutely refuse to actually cut their losses until they’re ready to have some Director/VP announce shit on an official level to the public. And even then, they’re never going to give a reasonable heads-up on a closure timeframe–you’re lucky if you get a full week’s notice. As someone who worked on the corporate end of things in Amazon Physical Stores prior to getting hit by a previous layoff wave, we were working on improvement projects for Amazon Books, Amazon 4-Star, and Amazon Style up til the day it was announced they were closing. It was really fun getting thrown onto Amazon Style projects after they publicly canceled the opening of the planned Amazon Style store in Bellevue, which had been on hiatus already for months and months. People didn’t see the closure of Books/4-Star coming (because those were entirely some new VP coming in and wanting to swing their weight around and make their mark), but after how much the closure of those changed people’s outlooks on the direction of the org (and killed morale to boot), everyone saw Style being on the chopping block pretty clearly. It was very clear that everyone dragged into a lot of those projects wanted nothing to do with them and only was gonna put the bare minimum effort in to get the gratuitous garbage to be technically-functional-enough to get it out the door, no matter how much some sociopath yelled about making it “scalable” or some shit.
B
They have to “grow” for investors and many times that just means spending money to spend it. “We’re growing because we invested in new store layouts.” And everyone claps and no one asks “why did you do that?”
E
Monopoly money spends when it’s a multibillion dollar multinational company spending it.
E
I imagine they’ll just retrofit it into a Whole Foods if there isn’t one close.
E
Here’s an article about it. Sounds like some locations will turn into Whole Foods locations [https://www.geekwire.com/2026/amazon-closing-all-amazon-fresh-and-go-stores-to-focus-on-whole-foods-and-grocery-delivery/](https://www.geekwire.com/2026/amazon-closing-all-amazon-fresh-and-go-stores-to-focus-on-whole-foods-and-grocery-delivery/)
B
Will 23rd and Jackson turn into a Whole Foods? If not, Amazon has created a food desert in the CD.
M
Not to be charitable to Amazon but the CD was a food desert before Fresh and PCC came in. *This is why the CD has a really high concentration of corner stores compared to the rest of Seattle (which mostly has none).
J
That Amazon Fresh store also absolutely blows. The old Red Apple was much better, it was sad to see it go. Hopefully something comes in that’s not run by the evil empire.
K
I lived on Beacon Ave S before the light rail and though I often complained about the Red Apple prices there on BAS, I loved the people who worked there and their fried chicken was da bomb! I lived up there during snowmageddan, aww the “good ol’ days” 🙂
H
It’s still the same! I choose to shop there to support a local chain and because they don’t treat you like a criminal just for walking in. Helps me justify paying the inflated prices
A
I closed on my house in the CD the week the Red Apple closed and I’m still livid about it. I was looking forward to being able to walk to a grocery store. Still hoping I get to do that.
H
It’s hard to say how well Whole Foods would be doing as an independent company, but I have to believe it would be doing better than it is now. Met Market is doing well, and I think that’s partly because WF basically vacated their market segment. Amazon’s grocery experiment relied too much on delivery, but when they made it more expensive than just being a Prime member, that was the beginning of the end.
M
Met Market has a smart strategy, premium goods, super premium prices , just a few stores placed in neighborhoods that have residents willing to pay those prices. I have no idea if they are doing well , Met Market is owned by a giant South Korean conglomerate and they do not share financial info, and grocery is a weird business, cannot tell profit by how busy a store is.
M
Met Market has a chokehold on me because it seems like every week I have at least a few ingredients that I can only get there or that I need a higher quality version of the thing, so I pop in there and then decide to just buy the rest of my groceries there anyway for convenience even though I can buy regular breadcrumbs or whatever at Safeway. I need to stop being lazy cause shit’s expensive.
T
That’s exactly how grocery stores operate. They differentiate themselves by having something specific that will draw you in and then rely on people being too lazy to go to another store to get the other stuff.
R
> something specific that will draw you in That’s why the “The Cookie” stand is genius. Where else will I clog my arteries and get instant cavities with a side of diabetes? Costco’s fruit smoothies somehow have a similar effect on me, especially in the summer. I guess this homo sapiens really needs his reward for hunting food
M
The new Peanut Cookies are so incredible.
H
I love metmo. Their produce is the best out of all grocery stores in my area and I always buy myself the nice stuff when it’s on sale. Plus their cookie is just insane
K
Met steals my money every year when Peach O Rama rolls around.
H
Omg I fucking LIVE for those peaches!!!!!
H
Yeah, I spend WAY too much money on those peaches, but they’re worth every penny!
D
EH???? EMART? As in the Shinsegae group??? Formerly of Samsung?? EHH??? This explains so much, because last time I was there they had bunch of products that was E Mart branded things and I was confused. This also explains why they started doing those Korean street toasts. Since Shinsegae is a publicly traded company their finances should be available. You might have to dig deep as you are looking at 3 layers of subsidiaries.
F
Their coupons are brilliant examples of loss leader marketing. I go in for BOGO salmon, come out with a bag full of cheese and baked goods. 🙈
M
Next week BOGO – The Cookie 🍪
Y
I stopped going to Safeway when I realized Met Market’s prices were actually better.
M
Safeway has gotten bizarrely way more expensive than QFC. You want to spend $50 on a generic OTC medication that’s $5 everywhere else? Our Bonne Maman jams are on sale and $1 off, only $8.99! Never mind that the regular price at QFC is $5.50.
X
Yeah I mean fuck Amazon. I stopped shopping at WF when it was acquired. I’m sure there aren’t a lot of us, but I’d also guess I’m not the only one. Man I miss it. But I will not give money to Amazon.
S
Same. Never set foot in a WF since the acquisition.
H
Just walking into one is an entirely different vibe than it used to be. I used to be pretty interested in their hot food and fancy bread/cheese areas, but now I won’t go near them. I only go to WF if I need to return something I bought at Amazon.
E
You’re not alone!
E
As someone who worked at WF, it was nice being under the Amazon umbrella, but their priorities have definitely changed since COVID and before then too. I wouldn’t say that the Amazon buyout was a bad decision, but it made it more difficult to appeal to people who wanted more premium and organic options. Met Market and Wegmans (former east coaster here) are what WF is supposed to be. Logistics and customer experience are definitely way more important to WF now and I appreciate it to an extent; it made my job a lot easier, but it did make it a little dehumanizing. Grocery delivery is very popular and we’d get ~1200 online orders a day, something that people overlook. Sure, WF cares a lot about their employees and how their stores are ran, but the quality isn’t fully there compared to a decade ago.
A
I was on the data side there, fully agree with your assessment. OG Whole Foods employees seemed to care far more about the original culture, caring for the store workers, etc. My team on the Amazon side was excellent but the top-down decisions were often kind of bonkers.
C
Met Market is ridiculously expensive but has good coupons if you are on their mailing list. Town & Country, Costco and Trader Joe’s are my go to. I used to love Whole Foods before the became part of Amazon.
M
They added the same fees to the WF delivery and they are still growing.
S
And they closed the Whole Foods in Capitol Hill last year, so that’s barely happening either. I guess the little Amazon Go on Madison will shut down soon.
K
That’s my store, it closes Friday.
M
oh man, i enjoyed popping in there for a quick lunch when i lived in first hill sorry to hear that
B
Sorry. It’s a tough time to be looking for a job. Good luck.
I
retail is always hiring but yeah
I
Sucks I am sorry for you all. It’s not even like you can transfer a few blocks away to that Whole Foods.
B
That was a bummer. Would be rad if the 23rd and Jackson fresh turned to WF.
Additional Sources:
CNET – Tired of Paying Full Price? Master These 18 Hidden Amazon Prime Perks Today
Grocery Dive – Amazon to shutter all Amazon Fresh and Go stores
