First Amazon Fresh Store Opens In Woodland Hills

WOODLAND HILLS, CA — Amazon announced its first brick-and-mortar Fresh Grocery store has opened Thursday in Woodland Hills, which will include some new technological features aimed at improving customer experience.

"Amazon Fresh is a new grocery store designed from the ground up to offer a seamless grocery shopping experience, whether customers are shopping in- store or online," said Jeff Helbling, vice president of Amazon Fresh Stores. "We've taken our decades of operations experience to deliver consistently low prices for all, and free same-day delivery and pick-up for Prime members."

The 35,000-square-foot store, on 6245 Topanga Canyon Blvd., is open daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. The store previously opened in August, but was invitation only.

At Amazon Fresh, customers can choose to use traditional shopping carts and a regular checkout experience or the new Amazon Dash Cart to skip the checkout line by placing their bags in the cart, sign in using their Fresh QR code in the Amazon app, shop and exit through the Dash Cart lane to complete payment.

Amazon said the cart uses a combination of computer-vision algorithms and sensor fusion to identify items put in the cart. More information on the Dash Cart can be found at www.amazon.com/dashcart.

Amazon owns Whole Foods, but the new Fresh stores are not supposed to compete directly with those outlets, which only sell organic products, the company said.

The company will include conventionally produced goods and other prepared meals, and it is also promoting low prices on several basic items as well as offering prepared meals for sale.
Paragon Commercial Group LLC said last week that it completed a redevelopment of a former Toys "R" Us store to create the first Amazon store at the southwest corner of Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Erwin Street within the Warner Center business district, directly across the street from The Village.

"The redevelopment of this site over the last seven years is a great example of sticking to a business plan," said Erwin Bucy, a principal of Paragon. "This area of the San Fernando Valley has been in need of a convenient grocery-anchored center for its growing residential community, and we are proud to have worked with the city of Los Angeles and Amazon to successfully deliver what the community needed."

Since acquiring the property in 2013, Paragon said it has updated the center and the tenancy to keep pace with the rapid growth of Woodland Hills and Warner Center, as well as the evolution of the retail shopping experience. Amazon opened a store at the same site in April, but only to fulfill online orders.

Helbing told Supermarket News that Amazon Fresh stores will soon open in North Hollywood, Northridge, and Irvine.

Originally built in 1970, a portion of the 6.26-acre property was redeveloped into multi-family apartments, while the remainder of the retail center has been upgraded to include businesses attempting to meet the needs of the neighborhood.

— City News Service contributed to this report.