Amazon.com Inc is planning to open later this year a new chain of grocery stores at dozens of locations around major cities in the United States to further expand in the food business, reported The Wall Street Journal.
The new chain of stores would be separated from and not intended to compete directly with Amazon’s existing food chain Whole Foods or its cashier-less convenience store Amazon Go and would be offering variety of products to better excel in the traditional grocery market dominated by major player like Kroger, Walmart, Publix and Albertson’s.
Amazon to expand its grocery footprints through its new supermarket brand is also aiming on acquisition strategy and has been seeking to acquire smaller grocery chains of regional level having at least dozen or more stores.
But it is unclear that the planned new chain would be operating under the brand name of Amazon or with a separate brand name, according to the report.
The WSJ reported that the online retail giant is in talks to lease locations in shopping centers in cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Seattle and San Francisco, where one or both of its Whole Foods and Amazon Go is already operating.
The report also unveiled that Amazon is intending to begin its planned new chain by opening first store Los Angeles before end of this year and already signed lease contracts for at least two other grocery store locations planned to be opened in early next year, the WSJ said.
Amazon acquired the up-scale grocery food chain Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017 and after that the grocer, which is known to be an up-scale grocery stores chain, expanded its offerings but remained sticking to its strict food standards.
But with its new plans it appeared that Amazon is planning not only to grab the larger market share by offering a wider variety of products which it has not being offering at the Whole Foods stores and also expanding its brick-and-mortar presence.
