Amazon cutting 3,339 jobs at Southern California convenience stores

Amazon, which announced plans last week to shutter its grab-and-go-groceries and gadget stores, says it is laying off 3,339 jobs in Southern California beginning in April as part of the shakeup of its Fresh and Go-branded grocery stores.

On Jan. 27, the e-commerce giant said it would close its 5-year-old Fresh-branded grocery stores and its automated Amazon Go markets.

The layoffs are expected to begin April 28 after the “public-facing operations” at the Fresh stores cease March 13, according to a letter filed Jan. 28 with the state by Vani Appukkutty, a senior manager in the company’s human resources department.

“Employee separations resulting from this action are expected to be permanent,” Appukkutty wrote in the letter to the Employment Development Department.

The company said in a blog post on Jan. 27 that some locations would be converted into Whole Foods Markets.

“While we’ve seen encouraging signals in our Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, we haven’t yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion,” Amazon said.

The grocery closures affect 738 jobs in Orange County (Fullerton, Irvine, Fountain Valley and Huntington Beach), 1,569 in Los Angeles County (Cerritos, Encino, Long Beach, North Hollywood, Pasadena, Porter Ranch, Torrance and Woodland Hills), 332 in Riverside County (Corona and Murrieta), 379 in San Bernardino County (Fontana and Upland), 182 in San Diego County (Poway) and 139 in Ventura County (Moorpark). Amazon Go operates in Torrance. Other Go stores in Whittier and La Verne closed Jan. 6.

The jobs listed in the EDD layoff notices include cashiers, managers, a loss prevention specialist, and food production associates who put fruit and vegetables in produce coolers.

The filings were made as part of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act — commonly referred to as WARN — which is required when an employer lays off more than 50 employees. All affected employees are notified at least 60 days before their terminations are scheduled to occur, according to Appukkutty.

The company said it will work to help employees find other jobs at Amazon, including at Whole Foods or in its logistics network. An Amazon spokesman could not say Monday which stores would be converted to Whole Foods.

The company has plans to open at least 100 Whole Foods stores over the next few years, including the expansion of Whole Foods Market Daily Shop, a smaller format store concept, the spokesman said.

Amazon has been slimming down its global workforce in recent months. Last week, the online giant slashed about 16,000 corporate roles in the second round of mass layoffs for the e-commerce company in three months. Those layoffs were Amazon’s biggest since 2023, when the company cut 27,000 jobs.

The tech giant has said it plans to use generative artificial intelligence to replace corporate workers. It has also been reducing a workforce that swelled during the pandemic.

Beth Galetti, a senior vice president at Amazon, said in a blog post Jan. 28 that the company has been “reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.”

The company did not say which business units would be impacted, or where the job cuts would occur.

The latest reductions follow a round of job cuts in October, when Amazon said it was laying off 14,000 workers. While some Amazon units completed those “organizational changes” in October, others did not finish until now, said Galetti last week.

Amazon laid off 760 jobs in Southern California in January as part of the announced shakeup in Ocrober

In that round of layoffs, Amazon cut 1,540 positions in California — including 783 in Northern California, according to Appukkutty. In Southern California, layoffs were announced in Irvine (333), Culver City (152), San Diego (145) and Santa Monica (130).