Amazon Fresh opens first store in Northern California. Our photos and video take you inside
Retail giant Amazon opened its first brick-and-mortar Amazon Fresh grocery store Thursday in Roseville.
The new 42,000-square-foot Amazon Fresh is located at 6780 Stanford Ranch Road off of Five Star Boulevard. It is the first Amazon Fresh grocery store in Northern California outside of the Bay Area after several years of anticipation.
“We are so excited to be a part of this community and impress our customers with great value, selection and convenience,” said Stockton Young, a regional manager for Amazon Fresh’s store operations.
The grocery store features more than 18,000 products, including meats, seafood, produce, bread, prepared meals and international offerings. It will also have items from more than 500 regional brands, the Seattle-based company said.
At the opening ceremony Thursday morning, more than 100 customers lined up around the building to be some of the first to enter the new store. The first person in line received a $100 Amazon gift card and next 99 shoppers were handed gift cards up to $15.
Citrus Heights resident Lawanda Brown said she made the drive over in hopes Amazon Fresh would have a variety of low-cost products so she wouldn’t have to shop elsewhere.
“I’m hoping they have it all,” she said. “If they have the deals I think they have, I’ll be back.”
Amazon Fresh offers customers five different ways to shop for products. Shoppers have the option to scan items as they go with a “Dash Cart” that allows them to simply walk out when finished shopping, or people can use self-checkout, assisted checkout or choose curbside pickup as well as same-day home delivery.
According to the company, the new location created about 100 jobs for residents in the Sacramento area.
“It’s brought good quality jobs to the region,” said Roseville Mayor Bruce Houdesheldt. “We have a skilled workforce that’s ready to contribute.”
Amazon Fresh opened its first location in the Los Angeles area in September 2020 and has since been joined by nearly 50 locations across the United States. Amazon Fresh is similar to other supermarkets while being a physical extension of the popular online shopping retailer.
Tapping into its vast online inventory, shoppers can get discounts for up to 4,000 products across the store, while Amazon Prime customers can receive an additional 10% off on hundreds of other items, an Amazon spokesperson said.
The opening comes as the company also announced another Amazon Fresh was slated to open next month in Elk Grove.
The company — which also owns the upscale Whole Foods grocery chain — kept mum for years about the stores as it quickly took up retail spaces across the capital region before pausing its nationwide expansion.
In January 2022, The Sacramento Bee confirmed the Roseville location with city 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.
Then came a lull as Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told investors last year that the company wouldn’t open new supermarket locations until it solidified a system that resonated with customers. He said at the time that Amazon also needed to “like the economics.”
With the two new stores coming online, it appears development efforts have begun on more Amazon Fresh stores in the capital region — but at a different location.
An opening date for a third location already built out, in the Country Club Centre in Arden Arcade, has not been announced.
In June, Sunrise Village shopping center in Citrus Heights listed a grocery store as “coming soon” to a space measuring more than 38,000 square feet.
Amazon Fresh locations will be open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day.
This story was originally published August 22, 2024 at 11:34 AM.
