Amazon is beefing up its physical retail game with a new big-box store concept that goes well beyond groceries.
Village officials in Orland Park, Illinois, voted on Tuesday to approve Amazon’s plan to build a 228,000-square-foot mega store near Chicago. That’s roughly the size of a newer, larger Walmart Supercenter.
Planning documents said the facility would offer both groceries and general merchandise, as well as other services and prepared food options. Customers would also be able to place and receive online orders on-site.
Katie Jahnke Dale, an attorney for Amazon, told the planning commission that the plan is “a more purpose-built and thoughtful” approach to traditional big-box stores, according to the Orland Park Patch.
“This is a retail concept, a retail store, albeit with perhaps a larger storeroom in the back, which will allow us to enhance the customer experience,” she said.
An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider the store was one way the company is experimenting with making customers’ lives easier.
“The site in question is our planned location for a new concept that we think customers will be excited about,” the spokesperson said.
If all this sounds familiar, it’s probably because hypermarkets like this one have been a staple of American retail since 1988, when Walmart opened its first Supercenter outside St. Louis. Walmart now has about 4,600 US stores.
Of course, Amazon is no stranger to physical retail — at least in comparatively smaller formats.
The company operates 58 Amazon Fresh grocery stores, 14 Go convenience locations, and more than 500 Whole Foods Markets.
Amazon said that more than 150 million US shoppers get groceries from the company, generating over $100 billion in sales in 2024.
Where those stores primarily focus on food, the new plan calls for a much broader range of merchandise, such as housewares or apparel, that can complement grocery shoppers’ carts.
As traditional retailers like Walmart and Target ramp up their e-commerce efforts, Amazon is taking a few pages from the brick-and-mortar playbook as well.
This expansion comes a month after Business Insider reported that Amazon has been developing a “rush” pickup service, which would allow shoppers to collect their orders at Amazon-owned stores within an hour.
The company is also testing a fulfillment-only store concept that it expects to bring 30-minute delivery to customers in Seattle and Philadelphia.
