Someone Is Planning A Drive-Thru Grocery Store In Silicon Valley: Maybe Amazon

(Great Beyond)

A real estate developer has filed building plans for an 11,000-square foot grocery pickup facility in Sunnyvale, CA, but won’t say who their client is. Sunnyvale is the Silicon Valley town where Yahoo is based, but word in the local real estate community is that their new grocer isn’t a local startup: it’s Amazon.

Amazon has, after all, been experimenting with both parts of this idea: they’ve been delivering groceries to customers’ doorsteps, but struggling with the “fresh” part of the Amazon Fresh brand. The company is also experimenting with using the U.S. Postal Service for early morning grocery deliveries.

They’ve also opened one store on a college campus where students, faculty, and staff can pick up their orders. Combining these ideas solves the problem of delivering perishable food, and also means that live customers will be sitting in front of kiosks providing feedback on the experience.

If this business model sounds familiar, it should: Walmart has set up a very similar drive-thru store near its headquarters in Arkansas. Customers place their orders, announce their location on a kiosk, and wait for an employee to bring out their grocery order. If this facility in Sunnyvale isn’t run by Amazon, it’s possible that it could be a Walmart joint. The green color scheme in the preliminary sketches is only preliminary, but matches both Amazon Fresh and Walmart drive-thru store branding.

Is Amazon going to open a grocery drive-thru? [Retail Wire]