Amazon debuts 2 new store brands in its Amazon Fresh grocery store
With the opening of its new Amazon Fresh format, Amazon also is launching two new store brands. Newcomers Fresh and Cursive will be among the assortment at the retailer's new Amazon Fresh banner in Woodland Hills, Calif.
The new store brands — announced in a blog post on Thursday by Amazon Fresh vice president Jeff Helbling — will join the newly revamped Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value brand, as well as Amazon's online private label brands like Amazon Brand Solimo, Happy Belly dairy products, Wag pet care, Amazon Kitchen prepared foods, Amazon Elements supplements and more. Amazon has a page dedicated to its "our brands."
"Our Fresh brand offers great value on things like meat, seafood and bakery items,” said Jeff Helbling, vice president of Amazon Fresh, in an exclusive interview with sister brand Progressive Grocer. He added that as an example the Fresh brand will carry a natural whole chicken with no added hormones for 99 cents. The brand also lists bakery goods and salsa as items under the label.
"And our new Cursive brand is an exclusive wine brand to Amazon. It offers a selection of reds and whites, also with terrific value. My favorite of this group is our Cursive Rosé, which is great for this time of year, and was also recently awarded a 92 rating by James Suckling."
Cursive includes a selection of 10 everyday go-to wines — from a Pinot Grigio to a Malbec — that are easy-to-drink, well-balanced, and feature tasting notes and a style guide for attributes such as body, sweetness and intensity, to help customers find the right wine to buy.
Whereas the Amazon Go stores focused a lot on on-the-go items, the Amazon Fresh stores will also present a lot of prepared foods made fresh in-store, including bread, pizzas, rotisserie chicken and hot sandwiches — again similar to a traditional grocer and tied to its sister brand Whole Foods.
Amazon Fresh stores feature the new Amazon Dash Cart — a smart cart cashier-free experience synced to the Amazon mobile app. The stores also feature Ask Alexa stations for shoppers to use to get information on products. For shoppers who are less inclined to reinvent the grocery shopping experience, the store will offer a scannable checkout service and a traditional checkout, as well as traditional shopping carts and familiar point-of-sale systems for paying with cash, credit, debit, SNAP and other payment methods.
The next Amazon Fresh stores are coming to the Los Angeles and Chicago areas, per Helbling. "We're currently operating online grocery delivery from Woodland Hills, Irvine and Northridge," Helbling said. "We've also announced that we're going to open a Fresh store in North Hollywood shortly. And in Chicago, we're operating online grocery delivery out of our Naperville store, and we've announced that we're going to open in Oak Lawn and Schaumburg."
Read the full walkthrough of the new Amazon Fresh store at Progressive Grocer.