Beer and wine could be on the shelves when Amazon Go opens to the public in the next few months.
A spokesman for the e-commerce giant confirmed to GeekWire that Amazon plans to sell alcohol at its automated grocery store, after Recode spotted a notice for a liquor license application in a window of the store. The Amazon Go store, located at Amazon’s new campus on the edge of downtown Seattle, is currently only open for employees, but Amazon said it would open to the public in early 2017.
Adding alcohol does pose a small challenge to the Amazon Go model, however. Although Amazon’s brick-and-mortar convenience store uses technology to eliminate check-out lines, liquor laws require a human attendant to check IDs. Amazon said an associate would be staffed for this purpose.
The Amazon Go store will only sell beer and wine, but customers might be able to hop over to the company’s soon-to-open drive-up store in Ballard for hard alcohol. An application with the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board shows AmazonFresh has applied to sell beer, wine and spirits at the store. There’s still no word on when the Ballard store will open, but the application, along with recently added lights, suggests it could be soon.
