Amazon plans to massively expand its new grocery store concept with competitive prices that rival Walmart

• Amazon has opened 11 grocery stores since September 2020.
• The retailer is planning to open 28 more across the US with low prices to compete against Walmart.
• Online grocery ordering grew during the pandemic, and people ordered more grocery items on Amazon.

Amazon has opened 11 Amazon Fresh grocery stores since September across the US and UK, with the newest location added this week in London. The e-commerce giant has plans to open at least 28 more stores across the United States, Bloomberg reported.

Amazon's grocery store concept looks like an attempt to court lower income shoppers who might frequent Walmart for its affordable items, along with typical Whole Foods customers hoping to pick up online orders with free pickup and same-day delivery for Prime members.

In the US, Amazon Fresh stores sell national brands like Coca-Cola and Kraft, alongside Whole Foods-branded products, Hayley Peterson reported for Insider when the first store opened. Prices are on-par with Walmart and Aldi, Bloomberg found.

Stores have some classic features of higher-end grocery stores, with prepared food bars and made-to-order pizzas and sandwiches, along with rotisserie chickens.

Other features of the stores are new to the grocery world. Customers can use Amazon's Dash cart, which lets them check out automatically and skip lines in the Dash cart lane. The cart works in tandem with the Amazon app on the customer's phone, where they can add items, view their subtotal, and scan coupons. It is designed to hold two grocery bags, Amazon says.

Amazon Fresh stores don't have cashierless Go technology yet, although the company told Bloomberg it's testing it for possible future use. More so than smaller Amazon Go stores, "Fresh stores are more of an all-in strategy for Amazon. A very strategic, long-term play," an employee told Bloomberg.

As other grocery retailers have improved online ordering in the past year, Amazon is moving in the other direction to open physical locations. Americans were already thinking of Amazon as a grocery store, though, and it was dubbed America's favorite grocery store by the fourth annual Dunnhumby Retailer Preference Index for speed and perceived safety by customers.

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