Amazon announced on Tuesday that it is shutting down all of its Amazon Go convencience stores and Amazon Fresh supermarket locations across the U.S.
In total, Tuesday’s announcement will see the closure of 72 grocery locations.
Amazon said in a statement that it was instead going to focus its efforts on Whole Foods Market locations and on its grocery delivery service.
The mega-retailer said that despite “encouraging signals” from the public, the company couldn’t create a “truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion.”
Most of the Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go locations will close on Sunday, February 1. Stores in California will remain open for an additional 45 days to comply with state labor notification laws.
The company said that it has “gathered valuable insights about what matters to customers” during its operation of the Amazon Fresh and Go stores.
Amazon said it had seen growth from its Whole Foods stores and same-day grocery delivery and said it would focus on both moving forward, and indicated in its press statement that it planned to turn some of the shuttered Amazon Fresh stores into new Whole Foods locations.
The company has not revealed the total number of employees that will be impacted by the closures. It did say it is working to find new roles for the staff at those locations, including in its warehouses and throughout its delivery networks.
In addition to trying to find new jobs for those workers, the company said it is also offering them the option of a severance package that includes 90 days of full pay and benefits.
Whole Foods will now be Amazon’s sole physical retail space in the U.S. Though it has attempted other physical retail options in the past — like its bookstore — the only one with staying power appears to be its well-regarded grocery store.
But that doesn’t mean Whole Foods will always be its only retail space. Amazon said in its statement that it is still experimenting with possible new physical retail options.
Jason Buechel, Amazon Worldwide Grocery Stores VP and Whole Foods CEO, sent a memo to Amazon Fresh and Go workers who are losing their jobs a memo thanking them for their work and assuring them that their labor would be used in the future by Amazon to develop new retail ideas.
“Although we’re closing these stores, the impact of your work will shape our next generation of store concepts and customer experiences,” he wrote in the memo, which was first reported by GeekWire.