Special Report: Amazon Fresh - Lodi, NJ

Amazon Fresh

Opened: August 23, 2024

Owner: Amazon

Previous Tenants: Kmart

Cooperative: none

Location: 2 Memorial Dr, Lodi, NJ

Photographed: October 4, 2024

You know what the worst part is of the ongoing train wreck that is Amazon Fresh? It's not that Amazon has sat on unopened locations for so long that other businesses in the same strip malls have been struggling. It's not that their incompetent management has left dozens of towns and neighborhoods with subpar food options. It's not even that they're taking up valuable supermarket retail space that could have gone to more skilled operators. It's that every time they open a new location, I am hopeful. I think maybe they've figured it out. And by the time I leave the store, I just have to laugh at how terrible it was. It's an emotional roller-coaster for me, and it's quite inconvenient. Can you stop doing that? Thanks.

Of course, here in Lodi, I was chuckling well before even stepping foot into the store. I visited about a month and a half after the store actually opened, but it was still in grand-opening mode. Which you can clearly tell from the extensive festivities outside the store, which included a "now open" banner on the storefront and this hilarious single string of flags barely flying across the parking lot. This string of flags is particularly pathetic. I mean, I've ordered more decorations from Amazon. Is this all they could find?

Inside, the store looks quite good, but is being run just as poorly as the other locations. Now, Amazon Fresh doesn't run a good grocery store -- but they're still expanding, with new stores recently opening on Long Island and another coming to Woodland Park, New Jersey next week. Meanwhile, Amazon's head of grocery departed the company recently to work at restaurant startup Wonder. Perhaps a new management team (or at least a new leader) can breathe new life into the operation. See, there I go again, with my hope.

This Lodi store, replacing part of a closed Kmart, actually is in the same strip mall as an ALDI a store over. It's just down the street from a ShopRite, too. It's around 40,000 square feet, making it larger than the ALDI but much smaller than the ShopRite.

We're not off to a good start in the produce department, because although the store looks really good, actually, the presentation is just terrible. The shelves of produce were sparse at best, with way too many bins dedicated to the same items. Here's a barely-full row of nothing but tomatoes...

...and if you're looking for stone fruit, you're out of luck.

And the store clearly isn't getting volume that it needs. This kale had clearly been sitting for a long time, maybe weeks. You can see it starting to rot at some of the edges.

In its latest redesigns, Amazon Fresh has eliminated all service departments except deli and prepared foods. So meat and seafood is all packaged, which isn't necessarily a problem.

Here's a look across the middle of the store. For an idea of the layout, it's pretty typical for Amazon Fresh, with produce in the front-right corner and meat/seafood in the back-right. Dairy is on the back wall with frozen on the left side. Deli, bakery, and prepared foods are on the left side of the store.

Again, meat is looking good decor-wise but very sparsely-stocked. When I visited on a Friday afternoon, the ALDI next door was pretty busy and the ShopRite looked crowded, while this store had very little traffic.

The grocery aisles, though, looked very well-stocked and orderly.

Still, I wonder how much is just an illusion from good facing. Check out the Brillo boxes in the bottom right, you can see empty shelves behind that front row.

My complaints about Amazon Fresh are all really simple. The stores are poorly stocked, understaffed, and too expensive. A more specialized product mix, or a more discount positioning with lower prices, or simply higher quality and fresher products could fix the stores fairly simply.

The Prime signage is very good, though, and makes the Prime-exclusive discounts very clear.

Here's a look at deli and prepared foods in the last aisle...

Oh, and there's fresh pizza! Let's check it out...

...HOLY *#@&*($*@. What in the #(*#!*&$?? is this? (Pardon my French, oui oui.)

Okay. Now I know everyone has their own standards for good pizza but it doesn't take an experienced food critic to know something is seriously wrong with this pie. The ones next to it didn't look much better, either. And this is New Jersey -- go down the block and you'll find, well, regular pizza. Who's eating this?

And that just about wraps up this Amazon Fresh. Who knows -- maybe the Woodland Park location will be better...

In the meantime, here's some more posts today...

• Amazon Fresh's new store in Lodi, NJ (this post)
• A new gourmet market near Hudson Yards in Manhattan
• A CVS-turned-supermarket right on the NJ/NY border

Plus a preview of what we'll see tomorrow...

• Ongoing work at two different Food Bazaars
• Renovations finished at the ACME in Saddle Brook and the ShopRite in Rochelle Park
• The end appears to be near for South Orange's gourmet market