Amazon cancels cashierless counter in Fresh stores

Amazon is discontinuing its Just Walk Out (JWO) cashierless counters in America, less than a year after it launched the innovative grocery checkout to revive the underperforming Amazon Fresh.

Why?
Originally championed by Jeff Bezos, JWO technology has proven to be time-consuming and pricey to install. It also reportedly required ~700 human checks per 1,000 sales as of 2022.

Instead, the company will focus on Dash Carts, which allow shoppers to skip the checkout line by tracking and tallying items as they’re placed in the cart.

Amazon Fresh customers can still access JWO in US Amazon Go stores, the UK Amazon Fresh shops, airport stores and stadium concession stands.

That is not the only change.
Amazon also announced it is cutting hundreds of jobs within its cloud computing division, AWS, as part of a strategic realignment.

The company is reducing roles in its technology team for physical stores and at AWS sales and marketing.

These layoffs follow previous job cuts of nearly 30,000 staff in various Amazon subsidiaries last year, including Prime Video, MGM Studios, Twitch and Audible.