Amazon Fresh May Be Dead Deal In Safety Harbor; Bezos Said Company Is Reassessing

CLEARWATER, FL — While the grocery store chain has yet to confirm it, the speculation on what business will replace the former Winn-Dixie store in the Northwood Oaks shopping center may be over.

Resident Joyce DiDonato was waiting for her takeout order this week at Ban Thai and Sushi Restaurant Royal Thai Cuisine in Northwood Oaks when she spotted a "No Trespassing" sign in the window of the former Winn-Dixie, which closed in 2021.

The sign was posted "by order of the management, Trader Joe's," a grocery store residents of Safety Harbor, Clearwater and Palm Harbor have been begging to move in.

Northwood Oaks at 2519 McMullen Booth Road, north of Enterprise Road, straddles the boundaries of Clearwater and Safety Harbor. Its anchor tenant, originally a Sweetbay Supermarket and later Winn-Dixie, closed in 2021 after the parent company, Southeastern Grocers of Jacksonville, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization and closed 94 underperforming stores staring in 2018.

Since then, Southeastern Grocers has been steadfastly renovating and reinvigorating its remaining Winn-Dixie stores, including the Winn-Dixie in Dunedin, which has been completely remodeled and is celebrating its grand reopening this weekend.

Related: Raffles, Drawings To Be Featured At Dunedin Winn-Dixie Reopening

Winn-Dixie's reorganization plan forced the company to abandon other stores like the 35,000-square-foot store in Northwood Oaks.

Since then, residents have been speculating what might take its place.

It seemed the mystery was solved in March 2022 when zoning plans were submitted to the city of Safety Harbor for a $3 million renovation of the former Winn-Dixie in Northwood Oaks, owned by ECA Elle Northwood Partners.

The architectural plans referred to the project as “Mendel," a 007 code name that has been used to keep plans secret for Amazon Fresh stores under development.

More recently, the website storeopeninghours.com posted an announcement about the pending opening of an Amazon Fresh store in Northwood Oaks with an opening date "to be announced."

However, in February, Amazon President and CEO Andrew Jassy cast doubt on previously announced plans to open stores in Florida when he announced that Amazon was "pausing" its rollout of Amazon Fresh stores, so the company could "re-evaluate the concept's economies." Jassy said the company made the decision during its 2022 fourth-quarter conference call with analysts.

Amazon Fresh grocery stores made their brick-and-mortar debut in the U.S. in 2020.

According to the company's website, Amazon has opened 44 Amazon Fresh locations and 28 Amazon Go stores (convenience stores with self-checkouts) in the U.S.

The company's intentions were confirmed in a letter to shareholders released by Amazon founder and Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos on April 13.

Bezos announced that the company is re-evaluating and streamlining all of its operations, including eliminating 27,000 corporate positions.

"Over the last several months, we took a deep look across the company, business by business, invention by invention, and asked ourselves whether we had conviction about each initiative’s long-term potential to drive enough revenue, operating income, free cash flow, and return on invested capital," Bezos said.

"In some cases, it led to us shuttering certain businesses," he said. "In other cases, we looked at some programs that weren’t producing the returns we’d hoped (e.g. free shipping for all online grocery orders over $35) and amended them. We also re-prioritized where to spend our resources, which ultimately led to the hard decision to eliminate 27,000 corporate roles."

He said the company decided to stop pursuing some physical store concepts "like our Bookstores and 4 Star stores, closed our Amazon Fabric and Amazon Care efforts, and moved on from some newer devices where we didn’t see a path to meaningful returns."

While he said the company is reassessing its strategy for Amazon Fresh, the company fully intends to pursue its expansion in the grocery industry.

He noted that groceries are an $800 billion market in the U.S. alone and Amazon has built a significant online grocery presence over the past 20 years, offering more than three million items compared to a typical supermarket’s 30,000 items.

"While we’re pleased with the size and growth of our grocery business, we aspire to serve more of our customers’ grocery needs than we do today. To do so, we need a broader physical store footprint given that most of the grocery shopping still happens in physical venues," Bezos said.

He said Whole Foods Market, which Amazon acquired in 2017, "pioneered the natural and organic specialty grocery store concept 40 years ago, and today it continues to raise the bar for healthy and sustainable food.

"Over the past year, we’ve continued to invest in the business while also making changes to drive better profitability," Bezos said. "Whole Foods is on an encouraging path, but to have a larger impact on physical grocery, we must find a mass grocery format that we believe is worth expanding broadly. Amazon Fresh is the brand we’ve been experimenting with for a few years, and we’re working hard to identify and build the right mass grocery format for Amazon scale. Grocery is a big growth opportunity for Amazon."

The idea that a Trader Joe's could be locating to the area has been wholeheartedly embraced by the community, which even launched a change.org petition drive signed by 366 supporters to convince Trader Joe's to open a store in Clearwater.

The nearest Trader Joe's locations are at 2742 4th St. N., St. Petersburg, and 3808 W Swann Ave., Tampa, and that's too far away, said resident Kelly McKinnis who authored the petition drive.

"The only Trader Joe's near Clearwater, Belleair and Dunedin are in Tampa and St. Petersburg, which both locations are too far for a normal commute," she said. "It is a one-hour round trip drive from Clearwater, and even longer for Belleair and Dunedin."

Patch reached out to Amazon and Trader Joe's but has yet to hear back from the companies.