Amazon Go Stores Closing In NYC, Seattle And San Francisco: List Of 8 Locations

Amazon is closing down eight of its Amazon Go convenience stores in Washington, California and New York as part of its cost-cutting efforts.

In Seattle, Washington, where the first Amazon Go store was opened to the public in 2018, the company plans to close its convenience store in the Macy's Building at 3rd Avenue and Pine Street and another at 4th Avenue and Pike Street.

An Amazon spokesperson told Geekwire that both Seattle Amazon Go stores have been closed for some time amid crime concerns.

Amazon closed its cashier-less convenience store at 4th Avenue and Pike Street last August, while its store in the Macy's building has been closed since February 2020.

Amid the closures, Amazon continues to open new stores in Washington state. The company opened an Amazon Go store in Puyallup last month and its first suburban Go store in Mill Creek last year.

In New York City, the two Amazon Go stores at the cross-section of Maiden Lane and Pearl and on Park Ave South will permanently close down on April 1, Gizmodo reported.

The e-commerce giant will cease the operations of four Amazon Go stores in San Francisco, located at 300 California St., 3 Embarcadero Center, 98 Post St. and 575 Market St., on April 1, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

According to an Amazon spokesperson, the decision to close down the locations came after an assessment of their stores.

"Like any physical retailer, we periodically assess our portfolio of stores and make optimization decisions along the way," the Amazon spokesperson said in a statement to SF Chronicle.

"We remain committed to the Amazon Go format, operate more than 20 Amazon Go stores across the U.S., and will continue to learn which locations and features resonate most with customers as we keep evolving our Amazon Go stores," the spokesperson added.

The latest closures came almost a year after Amazon announced it was closing all 68 of its brick-and-mortar bookstores, pop-ups and shops carrying toys and home goods in the U.S. and the U.K.

The e-commerce company also recently announced thousands of job cuts as it navigates a tightening and gloomy global economy.

In January, Amazon said it planned to lay off over 18,000 employees after the company went on a hiring spree amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Today, I wanted to share the outcome of these further reviews, which is the difficult decision to eliminate additional roles. Between the reductions we made in November and the ones we're sharing today, we plan to eliminate just over 18,000 roles," Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo.

The massive workforce reduction would affect Amazon's human resources department, Amazon Stores, Amazon Go as well as its People, Experience, and Technology division.

Last month, the company reported a growth of 9% in net sales in the fourth quarter of 2022 at $149.2 billion, compared to $137.4 billion in the same quarter in 2021.

Meanwhile, the company's operating income dropped to $2.7 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $3.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021.