A rendering of a new Amazon Go store format planned for Mill Creek, Wash. (Amazon Image)

Amazon Go is going where customers live, not just where they work.

The high-tech convenience store model that Amazon first introduced in January 2018 is headed to the suburbs with a new format, the company announced Tuesday. The first store will open in Mill Creek, Wash., north of Seattle, in the coming months.

Amazon says the format is different because it’s closer to home for customers, rather than near the urban core and office buildings where 24 stores in several U.S. cities are currently located.

“We think local residents and commuters will enjoy the ease of our Just Walk Out shopping to quickly and conveniently shop from an expanded selection of tasty, ready-to-eat food items and grab-and-go beverages and snacks in their own neighborhood,” Amazon said via a spokesperson statement.

Just Walk Out is what put Amazon Go on the map when the first store opened in Seattle four years ago. The technology relies on an array of sensors and cameras to track what customers pick up, and those customers are able to exit the stores without having to wait in line or deal with a traditional check-out process.

Inside the first Amazon Go store in downtown Seattle. (GeekWire File Photo)

Just Walk Out is now used in a number of Amazon’s larger Amazon Fresh grocery stores as well as in four food stores located inside Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena. Amazon said last fall that it planned to bring the technology to two Whole Foods stores starting this year. The tech giant purchased that grocery chain in 2017 for $13.7 billion.

Amazon is also bringing the Just Walk Out technology beyond its own walls, selling it to other retailers. And in November it opened a store with Starbucks that includes the cashierless checkout system.

Amazon opened another physical store concept with Just Walk Out called Amazon Go Grocery in February 2020 in Redmond, Wash., a suburb east of Seattle. But it closed that location last year and ditched the Amazon Go Grocery brand.

The Amazon Go in Mill Creek, a city of about 20,000 in Snohomish County, will be located at 13209 39th Ave. SE. The store will be approximately 6,150 square feet, with 3,240 square feet of that for front of house.

The location is 24 miles or about 32 minutes via Interstate-5 from the original Go location, at the base of an office tower on Amazon’s Seattle headquarters campus. There are now seven Go stores in the city, as well as locations in San Francisco, Chicago and New York.

All of the stores are close to traditional business districts. Amazon’s desire to get closer to where people live in addition to where they work could be a nod to the fact that those lines have blurred so dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of work-from-home models.

Amazon also said the new format will be coming to the Los Angeles area in the coming months.

The e-commerce giant has been busy of late with announcements related to its physical retail ambitions. Last week, the company unveiled plans for an Amazon Style store in Los Angeles — its first physical fashion store. The week before that, the company confirmed it was opening a new Amazon Fresh grocery store, with Just Walk Out tech, south of Seattle in Federal Way, Wash.

Amazon also announced last fall that it was partnering with Starbucks on the first “Starbucks Pickup with Amazon Go” location in New York City. It’s now open.

Amazon first made a move into brick-and-mortar retail with the opening of its first physical bookstore in Seattle in 2015. In addition to Whole Foods and dozens of Fresh grocery stores and Go convenience stores, the company has 4-star locations that sell customer favorites, as well as numerous themed Pop Up stores offering top brands.

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