Amazon Go Mill Valley Grocerant No Not Yet

 

Amazon Go and all fresh food retailers have noticed discontinuity in consumer food shopping behavior and all are fighting for a larger share of stomach.   Contributing to this displacement is a focus on short term market metrics particularly price, quality, and portability according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.  

Today, the price, value, service equilibrium is resetting within the Grocery sector, Restaurant sector, Convenience store sector, along with new non-traditional points of fresh food distribution.  Consumers are looking for new products, new packaging, and time saving meal options according to Johnson.

Amazon Go, Mill Valley is its most recent unit to open.  It is a large step forward for an urban concept placed in the suburbs. To large a step for success according to Johnson.  The consumer is dynamic not static and Amazon Go is moving forward, but just might have to take one step back.

All of that said, the Grocerant Guru® has once again retooled, reevaluated, calculated the price, value, service equilibrium for the foodservice sector.  He has once again evolved the formula, and here is the new formula:  Price + Quality + Social + Portability = Value.

Here is where Amazon Go missed the mark with the Mill Valley store. First the location it is a secondary site at best.  At the intersection Intellectual Quotient (IQ) and Emotional Quotient (EQ) the data from Amazons IQ overwhelmed the customer focused touchpoint of EQ.  While the store is in up-scale Mill Valley a C-store customer is still a C-store customer.  Someone at Amazon Go does not understand the mind-set of that customer yet.

They had the right products, wrong pricing, sizing, and placement within the store.  Lost in the shuffle of attempting to do to much is the fresh food, aka made to order meals and meal components. Great flavor, slow service, menu of yesterday’s entrée’s not todays. 

Mill Valley is one step closer to become a grocerant but not this store.  I would shutter the Mill Valley store next week, go back to the last edition, and suffer with a poor site. 

Here is why I like Amazon Go.  Food industry success is a four-step process according to Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® Steven Johnson.  Those four steps are Build, Measure, Learn, and Repeat and there is no company better at Build, Measure, Learn and Repeat than Amazon.  Amazon Go will evolve from this miss step and be better positioned several years from now to compete with the ilk of Sheetz, Rutters, Wawa. 

Right now, 7-Eleven, BP’s ampm, and Circle K all have a step up on Amazon Go.

Success does leave clues. One clue that time and time again continues to resurface is “the consumer is dynamic not static”.  Regular readers of this blog know that is the common refrain of Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.  Our Grocerant Guru® can help your company edify your brand with relevance.  Call 253-759-7869 for more information

In a Battle for Share of Stomach

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