Promenade a Prime location

Amazon takes brick and mortar space at Westlake shopping center



ALL QUIET, FOR NOW— This 31,000-squarefoot space at the north end of Rick Caruso’s Westlake Promenade shopping center will soon be home to Amazon Fresh, a grocery store chain created by e-commerce giant Amazon. The space has been empty for a year-and-a-half. KYLE JORREY Acorn Newspapers

ALL QUIET, FOR NOW— This 31,000-squarefoot space at the north end of Rick Caruso’s Westlake Promenade shopping center will soon be home to Amazon Fresh, a grocery store chain created by e-commerce giant Amazon. The space has been empty for a year-and-a-half. KYLE JORREY Acorn Newspapers

Global e-commerce giant Amazon is opening a grocery store in Thousand Oaks.

Amazon Fresh will fill a vacancy at the Westlake Promenade later this year or early in 2021, taking over the 31,000-squarefoot spot formerly occupied by Vintage Grocers and, before that, Bristol Farms.

Among the store’s features are special carts that tally up the items placed inside so there is no need to see a cashier, although they will be available, as will more conventional shopping carts.

A spokesperson for Caruso, which owns the Promenade, told The Acorn on Monday that the company was not yet authorized to speak about the incoming store.

High-tech grocer

Though Thousand Oaks had been mentioned in news reports as far back as April as a landing spot for Amazon Fresh, T.O. City Hall and Caruso have been tight-lipped about the online shopping leader’s foray into the local grocery market.

It wasn’t until the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control posted a notice of a liquor license transfer last Thursday mentioning Amazon by name that the location of the business was confirmed.

“We’ve been working with them since the beginning,” Haider Alawami, the city’s economic development chief, told The Acorn. “Of course, we’ve been told not to mention that name, but eventually it was going to come out.”

The first Amazon Fresh store in the nation opened in August in Woodland Hills, 15 miles away. Initially, it was open only to Amazon Prime members. Now it is available to the general public.

Some economic experts were surprised when Amazon, a company valued at nearly $2 trillion, announced in fall 2019 its intention to open a chain of grocery stores given that it had acquired Whole Foods only a few months earlier.

Other stores are planned in Northridge, Irvine and North Hollywood, an Amazon rep told SupermarketNews.com in August.

Amazon Fresh is more than a traditional grocery store. It will offer same-day grocery delivery and pickup, with shoppers who place their orders online being met in a designated parking spot outside the store.

Amazon Alexa users will be able to tell the digital assistant what they want and then have the items ready when they arrive.

But what is supposed to really distinguish the store from others is Amazon’s so-called Dash Cart.

According to Supermarket News, the cart “uses computer vision algorithms and sensor fusion to identify items placed in the cart’s basket. Customers sign into their Amazon account by scanning the Amazon app QR code using the reader on the cart’s handle, place bags in the basket and then begin shopping.”

The cart beeps when a product’s barcode has been recorded; if the item is removed from the cart, it is removed from a running tally of purchases displayed on a screen on the cart.

When they have everything they need, customers can leave through the Dash Cart lane, which automatically completes their purchase with any payment method added to the Amazon website or app.

Alawami said the store is an exciting addition for the Promenade, which has fared better than other local shopping centers during the COVID-19 outbreak because of its large public spaces.

“The way (Rick) Caruso and his development team built those shopping centers, with ample open areas out in front of the stores . . . that’s really played well into the outdoor activities that we are allowing temporarily,” Alawami said.

Bristol Farms was an anchor tenant at the Promenade when it opened in 1996. When the store closed in 2016 and moved to Woodland Hills, it was replaced within seven weeks by Vintage Grocers, which at the time had just one other store, in Malibu.

After being greeted by fanfare, the high-end grocer founded by Walmart heiress Paige Laurie eventually fizzled. Its owners closed the store one morning in March 2019 with no warning— even for employees.

“Hopefully they’ll be able to reach out to the Vintage Grocers employees and offer them a job,” Alawami said of Amazon.