Amazon converting Fresh supermarkets, Go stores to Whole Foods locations
Published Tue, Jan 27 2026
10:11 AM EST
Updated 3 Min Ago
Annie Palmer@in/annierpalmer/WATCH LIVEKey Points
- Amazon plans to close its Fresh supermarkets and Go convenience marts, and convert some locations into Whole Foods stores.
- It marks the latest pivot in Amazon's nearly two decade effort to grab a bigger share of the grocery market.
- Amazon said it will continue to offer Fresh grocery delivery and open more Whole Foods stores.
In this article
Follow your favorite stocks
CREATE FREE ACCOUNT
The exterior of an Amazon Fresh grocery store is seen on December 12, 2024 in Federal Way, Washington.Â
David Ryder | Getty Images
Amazon said Tuesday it plans to sunset its Fresh and Go brick-and-mortar chains, marking a major pivot in the company's grocery strategy.
"After a careful evaluation of the business and how we can best serve customers, we've made the difficult decision to close our Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores, converting various locations into Whole Foods Market stores," the company wrote in a blog post.
Amazon said the closures are part of an effort to prioritize investments, noting it still plans to roll out other brick-and-mortar concepts, including "a mass physical store format." It will continue to operate its Fresh online grocery service, the company said.
Read more CNBC tech news
- Apple, Google host dozens of AI 'nudify' apps like Grok, report finds
- Blockbuster social media trial kicks off, with more to come this year
- Meta inks deal to pay Corning up to $6 billion for fiber-optic cables in AI data centers
- TikTok blames data center outages for U.S. app problems, denies censorship claims
Amazon said it plans to open more than 100 new Whole Foods locations over the next few years. It will also expand its line of Whole Foods Daily Shops, which are mini-markets that offer a smaller assortment of grocery items.
For almost two decades, Amazon has been determined to become a bigger player in the grocery market. In 2017, the company spent $13.7 billion to acquire Whole Foods, the largest deal in its history.
Amazon debuted its Fresh grocery chain in 2020, with an eye toward mass-market shoppers. The rollout was turbulent in its early days, with Amazon opening a flurry of locations, before it shuttered some stores and halted expansion of the chain as part of broader cost-cutting efforts.
The company launched a revamped Fresh store concept in 2023, and then continued to tweak its strategy. Amazon shuttered all of its U.K. Fresh stores last September, and closed a handful of locations in Southern California soon after.
Amazon's Go convenience marts, which debuted in 2018, were a pet project of founder Jeff Bezos. The stores were designed to alleviate the headache of standing in a checkout line by allowing shoppers to "Just Walk Out." Each location was outfitted with an array of cameras and sensors that tracked each item shoppers picked off the shelf and automatically charged them as they exited the store.
"No one likes to wait in line," then-CEO Bezos wrote in his 2018 letter to shareholders. "Instead, we imagined a store where you could walk in, pick up what you wanted, and leave."
The company shifted further away from the cashierless technology in 2024 when it removed the systems from its grocery stores. In recent years, Amazon has sought to sell the software to other companies, primarily sports stadiums, concert venues, hospitals and colleges. It's also tested the automated grab-and-go technology in its warehouses.