New Holbrook Whole Foods latest of chain's stores to roll in upgraded 'smart' carts
The new Whole Foods at The Shops at SunVet in Holbrook is set to open Thursday with upgrade "smart carts" for shopping. Credit: Barry Sloan
Whole Foods Market’s rollout of its newest-generation "smart" shopping carts to more than 25 of its supermarkets this year, including a Long Island store opening Thursday, is designed to make shopping faster and easier, the chain said.
The natural and organic food grocer’s eighth store on Long Island will open at The Shops at SunVet in Holbrook on Thursday. So far, it is one of four Whole Foods stores, including locations in Massachusetts, Texas and Virginia, that have the upgraded, so-called "Dash Carts," which allow customers to pay digitally without going through traditional checkout lanes.
Previous versions of the carts are in fewer than 10 Whole Foods stores across the country, said Amazon, Whole Foods' parent company.
"Since we introduced Dash Cart in 2020, we've been constantly learning and iterating. The latest generation isn't just an upgrade — it's a complete reimagination based on direct customer feedback," Jason Buechel, CEO of Whole Foods Market, wrote in a LinkedIn post in January.
Dash Carts allow customers to scan items as they shop, and then roll through Dash Cart lanes that automatically process their payments.
The carts have built-in screens that display prices and maintain running totals as customers shop.
"The redesigned scanner is more responsive and prominently positioned right next to the screen, making it easier and faster to scan items and add them to the cart," Amazon's website says.
The redesigned cart is also 25% lighter, has 40% more capacity and offers more payment options than the previous model, the Seattle-based e-commerce giant said.
The smart carts were first introduced in 2020 at Amazon Fresh grocery stores. Disappointed with the tech-heavy chain’s profitability, Amazon announced in January that it would be shutting down the remaining 57 Fresh stores, including the two on Long Island.
Amazon said it planned to focus more on online grocery delivery and opening more than 100 additional Whole Foods stores over the next few years.
The Dash Carts are a valuable customer service tool that were only a portion of the technology in Amazon Fresh stores, which had issues because they weren’t differentiated enough from other supermarkets, said Joe Feldman, a senior managing director focusing on retail at the Telsey Advisory Group, a Manhattan-based brokerage firm.
"The Dash Cart requires far less investment since the technology is embedded in the carts. The carts provide added convenience and speed for customers who choose to use them. ... Amazon can use Whole Foods as a lab with the Dash Cart technology," he said in an email.
Of the 549 Whole Foods in North America and the United Kingdom, 97% are in the United States.
The full-service Holbrook store also has traditional checkout and self-checkout lanes.
The store has 145 employees, 41 of whom transferred from other Whole Foods stores, Amazon said.
The 43,000-square-foot Whole Foods in Holbrook is the largest anchor in the $93 million redevelopment of the struggling, former Sunrise Mall, at 5801 Sunrise Hwy. on an 18-acre site.
Built in 1973, the mall has been revamped into an open-air shopping center that will draw a more upscale mix of tenants, according to Regency Centers Corp., the Jacksonville, Florida-based real estate investment trust that is the lead partner in the redevelopment.
The redevelopment, which started in 2023, reduced the size of the retail space by 40% to 169,628 square feet.
The shopping center is 93% occupied or committed to incoming tenants, and construction is mostly complete, Regency said.
New tenants include Nordstrom Rack, cosmetics store Sephora, fast-casual eatery Wonder, Hand & Stone Massage & Facial Spa, Teachers Federal Credit Union, Wells Fargo Bank, Starbucks, Aspen Dental and golf shop Club Champion.
Other businesses that have signed leases at the shopping center but haven’t opened yet include prescription eyeglasses store Warby Parker, J. Crew Factory, Crumbl Cookies, Nava Health, Mógū Modern Chinese Kitchen and California Closets.
Most of the incoming tenants will be open by this summer, Regency said.
Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.
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