Amazon (AMZN) – Get Report confirmed this week that it will be opening a brick-and-mortar grocery store in a 43,000 square-foot building in suburban Chicago.The store won’t be part of its high-tech cashierless Amazon Go store chain, nor will it be a Whole Foods store, but will instead be more like a traditional grocery store. “Amazon is opening a grocery store in Schaumburg in 2020,” a company spokesperson said earlier this week, according to Arlington Heights, Illinois-based newspaper The Daily Herald. The store will be located at the Schaumburg Corners Shopping Center. The space was formerly a Babies R Us, the newspaper said.Amazon recorded a breakthrough for its grocery business in its first quarter earnings release after reporting four quarters of essentially flat sales. Physical store sales totaled $4.64 billion in the first quarter, an 8% year-over-year increase, driven primarily by the company’s Whole Foods business. Physical store sales rose 6.3% sequentially, after falling 0.9% year-over-year in the fourth quarter. Amazon’s physical store sales for 2019 were $17.19 billion, a 0.2% decline from $17.22 billion in 2018.Separately, Amazon is escalating its hiring surge during the coronavirus pandemic, announcing plans Thursday to convert the majority of its recently-hired 175,000 temporary staffers to full-time employees.Amazon will convert 125,000 of the 175,000 temporary hires brought on to deal with the crush of online ordering amid the deadly epidemic to full-time status in June, the company told Reuters.Full-time jobs at the company come with a minimum wage of $15 an hour.Amazon shares were up 0.15% to $2,414 Thursday. Amazon is a holding in Jim Cramer’s Action Alerts PLUS member club. Want to be alerted before Jim Cramer buys or sells AMZN? Learn more now.
I am a highly experienced and successful cryptocurrency author. I have been writing about cryptocurrencies for over 5 years and have seen the industry grow and change immensely. I am well-versed in all things crypto and blockchain, and it can be seen in my writings. My goal is to educate others about this fascinating industry, and to help them make informed investment decisions. I believe that cryptocurrencies are the future of finance, and I am eager to share my knowledge with as many people as possible.
