It remains to be seen when Amazon Fresh grocery stores will make a splash in Florida, but enthusiasm still abounds for their openings, including one expected in West Boca.
The latest talks about luring the company to the Sunshine State came this week when a Boca Raton developer told city officials about efforts to lure an Amazon Fresh to be part of a massive renovation of the 124-acre Boca Raton Innovation Campus. The redevelopment plan calls for creating a mini “village” with more than 1,200 residences, a hotel and a 5,000-seat entertainment venue. And the Amazon Fresh could be part of that vision.
For its part, Amazon Fresh has stayed mum about any planned openings. It has left some observers eager to see the company’s next moves for 2023.
Among the anticipated openings in South Florida has been an Amazon Fresh store in Uptown Boca, a shopping destination off Glades Road just east of State Road 7. That not-yet-open store already features the identical architecture and colors as other Amazon Fresh locations across the country — down to the green-and-black paneling over a portion of the overhang. But it’s been that way for about a year now.
Amazon Fresh opened its first location in 2020 and now has 44 stores in the United States. But the e-commerce giant hasn’t opened a new location since September, leading to questions about its expansion plans following the layoffs of more than 18,000 people earlier this month.
“It does appear they have paused the rollout,” said Jeff Wells, an editor for Grocery Dive, which covers the national grocery industry. “Speaking as a consumer, the stores are solid, but they’re not that differentiated from other [grocery] stores in terms of the products they offer and how they’re merchandised. It’s fairly basic.
“And grocery is such a competitive industry.”
“I think Amazon wants to get this right and it’s arguably better they would pause earlier in the rollout when they don’t have a ton of locations yet and to try and fix what might be wrong.”
Amazon Fresh’s ace card, however, has been its ability to speed up the shopping experience. Amazon Fresh stores use a tech-first approach in serving customers: The stores rely on a variety of cameras and sensors to track the items that customers take from shelves.
As customers leave, the store has kept tabs and knows what to charge customers to their Amazon Prime accounts, eliminating the need for checkout lines.
There have been additional blurbs of information that have surfaced. An economic development policy manager for Amazon last year told an audience of hundreds about plans to expand their footprint into Florida within the next few years.
“We’re looking to open a bunch of different Amazon Fresh grocery stores around the country in the coming years, including several in Florida by 2024,” the policy manager, Sam Blatt, said during a Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce breakfast last year, according to the Tallahassee Democrat. Blatt recently referred the South Florida Sun Sentinel’s request for comment to an Amazon spokeswoman, who said that Amazon does “not comment on our future roadmap.”
Amazon Fresh has not officially announced any locations in Florida.
While the company has remained quiet about the West Boca store, records submitted to Palm Beach County officials have described the project at Uptown Boca as a large-scale supermarket that encompasses 35,000 square feet. (An Amazon Fresh store that opened in 2021 in Illinois similarly is 35,000 square feet.)
Additionally, Uptown Boca’s website says the space has been leased for a “national grocery store.”
And that might not be the only Amazon Fresh that may open in the Boca Raton area. One of the city’s biggest developers revealed during a public meeting on Monday they’ve been in discussions with Amazon Fresh about potentially opening a store farther east, in Boca Raton by Yamato Road and Interstate 95.
The proposed location would be part of a massive renovation of the 124-acre Boca Raton Innovation Campus. Developers are planning to turn the sprawling site, which was the former home of IBM headquarters, into a mini “village.”
Angelo Bianco, managing partner for CP Group, told Boca Raton city officials during the recent public meeting that they’ve also had discussions with Amazon Fresh about opening a store at the site. Bianco said his desire was for an Amazon Fresh to be built in the heart of the village, but that Amazon Fresh “want[s] to be on Yamato [Road],” indicating there’s interest from the company in potentially opening a location in east Boca Raton.
Amazon has rapidly expanded its footprint in South Florida in recent years. For years, the company has been exploding with new sites ranging from warehouses to fulfillment centers to same-day sites, all with the intention to serve the region to get packages faster to your front door.
That included a 1-million-square-foot facility in unincorporated northwest Palm Beach County for large packages such as canoes and barbecues, and additional facilities in the unincorporated part of the county near West Palm Beach, Riviera Beach and Boca Raton.
Among the projects in recent years:
In Tamarac, a 178,240-square-foot Amazon same-day fulfillment center began operations in July 2021.
A distribution facility in Deerfield Beach opened about two years ago.
An Amazon “last-mile” delivery center opened in 2021 at the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport Industrial Park. The $38 million construction project has three buildings totaling 380,000 square feet.
But other plans for future expansion have hit a roadblock since 2021:
Amazon pulled out of plans to open a 250,000-square-foot warehouse facility in Coral Springs over the summer.
In 2021, Amazon purchased the vacant property at the northwest corner of Hiatus Road and Northwest 44th Street in Sunrise. Although there was a previous application submitted for a warehouse and distribution center at this location, the applications expired in August.
Amazon received permits to build a regional distribution center at 3150 NW 33rd St., near the Festival Flea Market, in Pompano Beach, but the project is on hold since no business license has been pursued. Also, in Pompano Beach, at 777 Isle of Capri, along the railroad, Amazon withdrew plans for a regional “sortation” facility.
And in 2020, Broward County received an unsolicited proposal from Amazon for the development of about 61 acres in county-owned land. The county asked for proposals, but wound up picking another company. When those plans fell through in the spring of 2021, they went back to Amazon to negotiate. But later that year, that ended, too. “Amazon’s stated decision to end negotiations was based on the business needs of Amazon’s business network at that time,” according to Gregory Meyer, the county spokesman.
