Retail giant Amazon opened its first brick-and-mortar Amazon Fresh grocery store in Roseville on Thursday.
The new 40,000-square-foot Amazon Fresh store is located at 6780 Stanford Ranch Road, off Five Star Boulevard, and is the first Amazon Fresh grocery store in Northern California outside of the Bay Area after several years of anticipation.
“We are thrilled to be part of this community and to impress our customers with great value, selection and convenience,” said Stockton Young, regional manager for Amazon Fresh store operations.
The grocery store will offer more than 18,000 products, including meat, seafood, fruits and vegetables, bread, prepared foods and international offerings, and will also carry items from more than 500 regional brands, the Seattle-based company said.
At the grand opening on Thursday morning, more than 100 customers lined up around the building to be the first to enter the new store. The first person in line received a $100 Amazon gift card and the next 99 shoppers received gift cards valued at up to $15.
Citrus Heights resident Lawanda Brown said she drove there hoping that Amazon Fresh would offer a wide selection of low-priced products so she wouldn’t have to shop elsewhere.
“I hope they have everything,” she said. “If they have the offers I think they do, then I’ll come back.”
Amazon Fresh offers customers five different ways to purchase products. Shoppers have the option to scan items using a “Dash Cart” so they can simply walk out after shopping, or they can use the self-checkout or attended checkout, or opt for curbside pickup or same-day home delivery.
According to the company, the new location has created approximately 100 jobs for residents of the Sacramento region.
“It has brought quality jobs to the region,” said Roseville Mayor Bruce Houdesheldt. “We have a skilled workforce ready to contribute.”
Amazon Fresh opened its first location in the Los Angeles area in September 2020 and has since expanded to nearly 50 locations across the United States. Amazon Fresh is similar to other supermarkets but is also a physical extension of the popular online retailer.
By leveraging the huge online inventory, shoppers can get discounts on up to 4,000 products storewide, while Amazon Prime customers can get an additional 10% off hundreds of other items, an Amazon spokesperson said.
The opening comes as the company also announced that another Amazon Fresh store will open in Elk Grove next month.
The company, which also owns the upscale grocery chain Whole Foods, kept quiet about the deals for years and quickly took up retail space across the Capital Region before pausing its nationwide expansion.
In January 2022, The Sacramento Bee confirmed the Roseville location with the city’s planning department. According to previous Bee reports, the building permit for the site of a former Toys R Us store never included Amazon’s name, only that of an architectural firm.
Then came a lull when Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told investors last year that the company would not open any new supermarket locations until it had established a system that resonated with customers. He said at the time that Amazon also had to “like the economics.”
With the opening of the two new stores, development efforts for additional Amazon Fresh stores in the capital region appear to have begun – albeit at a different location.
An opening date for a third location, already completed at the Country Club Centre in Arden Arcade, has not yet been announced.
In June, the Sunrise Village shopping center in Citrus Heights announced that it would soon open a grocery store in a 3,600-square-foot space.
Amazon Fresh locations are open daily from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Brianna Taylor, Marcus D. Smith and Hanh Truong of The Bee contributed to this story.
