Amazon Fresh grocery store opening ‘very, very soon’ in Arlington Heights
At long last — after many starts and stops — the planned Amazon Fresh grocery store in Arlington Heights is set to open “very, very soon,” a company official said Monday.
Village officials said they’ve been told that could mean as soon as the end of the month.
The proposed 50,000-square-foot brick-and-mortar supermarket at 325 E. Palatine Road had been in limbo for the better part of two years, amid the e-commerce giant’s re-examination of its business model in the grocery industry.
On Monday night, representatives of the local store came before the village board to ask for Class B and T liquor licenses, which will allow retail sale of alcohol and in-store tastings, respectively.
The Arlington Heights store will join locations in Bloomingdale, Morton Grove, Naperville, Norridge, North Riverside, Oak Lawn, Schaumburg and Westmont.
The stores are known for the use of so-called Amazon Dash Carts: high-tech shopping buggies equipped with scanners and sensors that detect what items are being placed inside. The system is synced up with consumers’ Amazon accounts and credit cards, so they can skip the checkout lines.
But anyone purchasing alcohol will still be stopped and asked to show identification. Carts will have lights that flash blue if alcohol is detected, while six self-checkout registers will similarly flash orange, store manager Matt Feldman told the village board.
The store will also have traditional checkout lines, and clerks will card alcohol buyers there, too, Feldman said. He added that everyone — no matter how old they look — will be carded, per corporate policy.
The first of the company’s grocery stores in Illinois opened in late 2020 in Naperville. That was around the same time the Arlington Heights village board awarded nearly $1.4 million in tax increment financing dollars to help pay for upgrades and site improvements that would bring a then-anonymous grocer and Raising Cane’s fast-food eatery to the Town & Country Shopping Center.
Renovations to the store interior started in 2021, and building signage for Amazon Fresh went up in June 2022. Those signs were taken down by the spring of 2023, despite Amazon having a lease with shopping center owner Visconsi Cos.
But Amazon’s grocery expansion into the Chicago suburban market is about to pick back up.
“Dealicious groceries coming soon” and Amazon grocery pickup parking space signs were installed in recent weeks in Arlington Heights, and a peek through the windows showed some shelves already stocked and an employee working at the front desk.
Assistant Village Manager Diana Mikula conducted a walk-through of the store last week, and the police department conducted background checks on five Amazon officials in February — both standard procedures as part of the village’s liquor license verification process.
A job posting for part-time grocery associates appeared online for another Amazon Fresh whose opening has been similarly delayed — this one in Tinley Park.
About 50 of the estimated 100 employees who will work at the Arlington Heights store have been hired, Feldman said.
When it opens, the store’s daily hours are scheduled to be from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.