Trying out Long Beach's new Amazon Fresh store

Amazon recently opened a new grocery store in my town, Long Beach, California, and I was eager to try it out. After all, the company has promoted its Amazon Fresh stores as offering a "seamless grocery shopping experience" where customers can skip the checkout line.

How well does it work?  I went there for the first time yesterday and while it was interesting, I would not call it "seamless."

Entering the store, I was surprised to see that it had many normal grocery store checkout stations. In fact, I was to learn, you can shop at Amazon Fresh just like other stores, going to a human checker to pay for your items.

But that's not why I came to the store. I want to shop the New Way. So I immediately headed for one of the Amazon Dash carts, a green grocery basket souped up with a video screen and bar code scanning devices.

An Amazon Dash Cart

Almost immediately, a friendly staff worker came over to show me how it works. First, you pull out the Amazon app on your phone and select "In-store Code." This generates a QR code — one of those blotchy ink-blot like squares — that you show to a screen near the handle of the cart. This logs you in; you can then put your phone away.

All the Dash Carts started preloaded with two empty double-bagged paper bags ready to receive your groceries. As the helpful worker explain, as you place items in the cart, a set of readers (small screens) around the perimeter of the cart will see the bar code and add the item to your total.

I had brought two plastic bags of my own, but the worker told me not to place those in the basket, because that would confuse the machine. I had to hang them on plastic hooks at the back of the cart.

My first stop was the produce section, where I tried placing some bananas in the cart. I kind of knew this wouldn't work, since there's no bar code on the bananas. Indeed orange lights lit up on my cart, warning that something wasn't right. I pulled the bananas out, and using the screen on the cart, entered the four-digit "PLU" number. It asked how bananas there were, I entered the number, then placed them in the successfully in the cart.

I picked out some cucumbers and followed the same process. I didn't choose any items that had to be weighed, but there were scales in the produce section if you needed to.

Buying produce always is a bit more complicated than other products no matter what store you're in. If you were using a self-checkout station at any grocery store, you would be entering the number of bananas or the weight of the item at the checkstand. Amazon Fresh has just shifted this to the produce section.

From there, I moved on to items with bar codes. I tossed a small bag of pasta into the cart, and the system successfully read the bar code on the fly. But for a couple other items, I got the Orange Lights of Rejection and had to pull them out and place them more slowly in.

I tested the cart a couple times by placing an item in and then removing it. The screen acknowledged that the item was removed. The screen kept a running total of your purchases, which could be handy to monitor your spending.

The Dash Cart is not set up for a large shopping trip. If you fill up the cart to the brim, the code-reading lights won't be able to see properly. You also can't place items on the shelf under cart.

This Amazon Fresh is an average-sized grocery store, but had slightly less selection of items than normal. It had no diet root beer, for example. The orange juice shelves offered only a few choices.

Finally, I was ready to check out — and this is where the promise of the Amazon Fresh stumbled. You supposedly can simply walk down a dedicated lane with a big green arrow and leave. Your Amazon account be automatically charged

But when I got to that lane, there were two customers with carts in front of me. Two store employees seemed to be checking what they bought. So I waited and pondered the meaning of "seamless."

Trying to leave

Finally, the lane cleared, and the same helpful employee showed how I should double check the total on my screen, and then click accept and then go.

Except I really couldn't. She now told me that I couldn't walk to my car with my cart. The cart couldn't leave the store. 

I hadn't planned on this twist, but I was able to do some quick reorganizing, placing all my items in the two paper Amazon bags and one bag that I had brought, then carrying them out. This is another reason not to fill your cart too full. I suppose I could have moved all my items to one of the regular carts, but I thought Amazon was trying to make shopping easier not harder. 

All in all, I'm underwhelmed by Amazon Fresh. The checkout was not particularly fast and having to hand-carry your groceries to your car is a step backward. Also, the small size of the Dash Cart greatly limits its usefulness.