When will Amazon Fresh markets open? We asked about 3 vacant Sacramento-area locations

When Amazon broke ground on supermarkets in the capital region, residents expected the tech company’s promise of effortless grocery shopping with step-by-step guidance from artificial intelligence.

That hasn’t happened.

The first of three Northern California brick-and-mortar Amazon Fresh location was slated to open early this year at The Ridge shopping center in Elk Grove, followed by stores in the Country Club Centre in Arden Arcade and on Stanford Ranch Road in Roseville. As of July, the storefronts remain dark, locked and shut off from residents with no update on if or when doors will open for the first time.

In an email to The Bee, Amazon spokeswoman Jessica Martin declined to answer specifics on if the company plans to open the storefronts. Instead, she forwarded an April statement to company shareholders that briefly touched on the company’s grocery line.

“Amazon Fresh is the brand we’ve been experimenting with for a few years, and we’re working hard to identify and build the right mass grocery format for Amazon scale,” said Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in the statement.

The tech giant had been quickly taking up space in the physical retail world — ownership of Whole Foods, bookstores and rapid expansion of Amazon Fresh and Go convenience stores — then it came to a halt.

In March 2022, news publications CNN, Reuters, CNBC and the Washington Post reported Amazon was closing all of its bookstores, “4-star” and Pop-Up stores to focus on Amazon Fresh, Go and Style stores.

Less than a year later, the company stopped the expansion of Fresh supermarkets.

Now, Realtors with stock in vacant Fresh grocery stores like in Elk Grove, Arden Arcade and Roseville, grow increasingly anxious as their storefronts sit idle.

Garrick Brown, vice president of real estate intelligence for Gallelli Real Estate, which oversees leasing for the Country Club Centre in Arden Arcade, said Amazon told the firm it would open that location by late next year. He said the company still has “infrastructure to put in place.”

Brown declined to comment on how much Gallelli Real Estate is charging Amazon to keep the space at 3460 El Camino Ave. due to “confidentiality agreements.”

“The entire retail real estate community has been extremely excited,” Brown said “I do think that most of us out there wish that it was moving more quickly.”

“I think that just speaks to a lot of the challenges of rolling out a new national chain, especially in the grocery world.”

‘The signage is up and the fixtures are in’

From the start, Amazon has kept a tight lip about the status of Amazon Fresh stores in the Sacramento area.

In January 2022, The Bee confirmed the Roseville location at 6780 Stanford Ranch Road with the city’s planning officials. According to previous Bee reporting, the building permit for the site of a former Toys R US store never included Amazon’s name on it, only an architectural firm.

Several weeks later, sources not authorized to comment on the project confirmed a second location in Elk Grove at 7540 Elk Grove Blvd.

Kelly Rule, senior vice president of leasing for Pappas Investments, developer of The Ridge Shopping Center in Elk Grove, told The Bee in an October 2022 interview that Amazon planned to open “the first part of 2023.”

In a recent email to The Bee, Rule said “the signage is up and the fixtures are in” but Amazon hasn’t given them an opening date — or a timeframe.

“As far as we are aware, they’re planning to open,” she said.

The status of the Roseville location is also uncertain.

Spokesman Brian Jacobson with the city of Roseville said officials haven’t had any conversations with Amazon and can’t confirm if or when the location will open.

The outer walls and roof of the building are constructed, but a tenant improvement permit was never submitted, he said in an emailed statement.

This means Amazon has not submitted plans or secured permits to complete “any of the needed changes” to the interior of the building like interior walls, electrical, plumbing and lighting.

“We only know of what we’ve read/heard in the media that Amazon has been re-evaluating their business model,” he wrote.

The Bee reached out to representatives from Sacramento County and the city of Elk Grove for specifics on the other vacant Amazon Fresh storefronts. Sacramento County forwarded a reporter to Gallelli Real Estate and the city of Elk Grove did not respond.

Amazon earnings call offers clues

During a fourth-quarter earnings call in February, Amazon announced it would shut down Amazon Fresh and Go convenience stores with “low growth potential” and temporarily pause the expansion of its Fresh grocery line.

During the February call, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company wouldn’t open new supermarket locations until it solidified a system that resonates with customers and separated them from its competitors. He said the company also needs to “like the economics.”

“We’re optimistic that we’re going to find that in 2023,” Jassy said during the February call.

Until then, people wait for Amazon to make the next move.

“I think the real estate community is still anxious to see those stores open and working and profitable,” Brown said. “it’s just that the timetables turned out to be longer than any of us expected.”

Amazon Fresh opened its first location in Woodland Hills in September 2020 and has since been joined by more than 40 locations in California, Illinois, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Washington state and New Jersey, as well as the Washington, D.C., area.

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