The new Amazon Fresh store in Crystal City is now open.
This morning, Amazon announced that its branded, 16,000-square-foot grocery store opens today. Store hours are 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
For more than a year, it was a bit of a mystery to exactly what was coming to 1550 Crystal Drive — even if all signs pointed to an Amazon Fresh. In February, the company finally confirmed it.
In addition to standard check-outs, the store will employ what Amazon calls “Just Walk Out technology.” Meaning, customers can exit the store “with the option to skip the checkout line.”
“Amazon’s Just Walk Out system uses ceiling-mounted cameras and artificial intelligence to track shoppers’ selections as they walk around the store and automatically charges them when they exit,” as described by Grocery Dive.
The other recently opened Amazon Fresh stores in Northern Virginia also use the technology.
The Crystal City Amazon Fresh is set to create “hundred of high-quality jobs with a starting wage of $15.50/hour,” according to a press release. “In addition to donating surplus food to local food banks.”
This will, technically, be the first grocery store in Crystal City in almost two decades, though there are a number of grocery stores nearby in Pentagon City and Potomac Yard.
Amazon Fresh is continuing its expansion across the region with three stores opening in Northern Virginia in just the past year including a planned store in Potomac Yard
Plus, it continues to be a rumor that Columbia Pike will be getting an Amazon Fresh as well. So far, Amazon has stayed quiet on the possible Pike store with a spokesperson telling ARLnow back in May that “we don’t comment on our future store roadmap.”