Why Amazon Fresh failed: Experts blame dystopian concept for closures,
It was supposed to trigger a revolution in how we shop on the high street.
But Amazon’s ‘Fresh’ shopping concept – which uses AI to track customers – may instead be remembered as a failed experiment in mass surveillance.
The tech giant has announced that it has made the ‘difficult decision’ to close all 19 Amazon Fresh stores in the UK – putting up to 250 workers at risk.
Amazon claims the closures are the result of a ‘thorough evaluation of business operations and the very substantial growth opportunities in online delivery’.
But experts say the British public became disheartened by the ‘Just Walk Out’ technology, which often didn’t work as intended, and stoked fears of Big Brother surveillance.
Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, called Amazon Fresh a ‘dystopian, total-surveillance shopping experience’.
‘Amazon’s intense tracking of shoppers will create larger personal data footprints than any other retailer,’ she said when the first UK store opened in Ealing Broadway, west London.
‘Customers deserve to know how and by whom these records and analytics could be used.’
Initially, the only way customers could get inside an Amazon Fresh store was to open the Amazon app and get a QR code that they’d scan to open a barrier.
When customers had their groceries and were done shopping, they could just walk back out the barrier.
Crucially, Amazon Fresh customers didn’t have to stop at a check-out – not only because there weren’t any.
The AI-powered surveillance system was built to identify each and every item the customer had taken, debit them on the app, and email them a receipt.
However, the system often had trouble noticing when a customer would put an item back on the shelf – meaning people were being charged for something they didn’t take.
Unsurprisingly, many British customers weren’t in love with the idea of having to open a phone app to get into a shop.
For the elder generation of shoppers without a smartphone, not being able to buy a bottle of water on a hot summer’s day was nothing short of farcical, not to mention dangerous.
Professor Luca Arnaboldi, a computer scientist at the University of Birmingham, said Amazon Fresh stores were always ‘more of a novelty’ than a rival to main street food stores.
‘Computer vision systems have flaws, as we even see in other domains such as automotive,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘Luckily, here the stakes are much lower.’
Meanwhile Professor Alan Woodward, a computer security expert at the University of Surrey, blamed the closures on the ‘reticence of UK shoppers’ to engage with Just Walk Out technology, which often didn’t work correctly.
‘I suspect physical stores just didn’t generate the footfall needed to be profitable enough for Amazon,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘The UK retail space must be one of the most competitive in Europe so it takes a lot to sway customers into using your physical outlets.
‘And the novelty of using these technologies probably wasn’t enough to do that.’
Perhaps recognizing it was missing out on customers to the likes of Sainsbury’s and Tesco, the tech giant revamped its UK branches in 2023, letting customers walk into the shop normally.
When people were done shopping, they were also given the more familiar option of paying for their groceries with a contactless card at the barrier (although payment via the app was still an option).
By 2025, Amazon had backtracked even further.
Fresh stores had been finally kitted out with traditional checkouts – but this wasn’t enough to save them.
Although Amazon hasn’t given a date for the closure of stores, the Daily Mail expects it to be before the end of the year.
The tech firm has been contacted for more.
Jake Moore, security advisor at software firm ESET, called the technology ‘seriously impressive’ but said anything this high-tech ‘comes at a cost’.
‘As this technology is still so advanced, some people may find they don’t trust it as they fear it could misinterpret what they purchase,’ he told the Daily Mail.
In its announcement on Tuesday, Amazon said it would be expanding online grocery delivery options with ‘more selection at faster speeds’.
It also plans to convert five of the 19 Amazon Fresh locations into Whole Foods Market shops.
‘Since 2008, we’ve worked hard to innovate to help our customers save time and money when shopping for groceries and household essentials,’ said John Boumphrey, country manager at Amazon UK.
‘We continue to invent and invest to bring more choice and convenience to UK customers, enabling them to shop for a wide range of everyday essentials and groceries with low prices and fast delivery through Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Fresh, and Whole Foods Market stores, alongside our third-party grocery partners, including Morrisons, Co-op, Iceland, and Gopuff.’
