Amazon Fresh Readies East Coast Stores With Hiring Events

With an already established presence in Southern California, Amazon Fresh is jumping coasts to enter the New York and New Jersey market area. The food retailer is readying its first stores in these states by hiring hundreds of full- and part-time employees.

Located in Paramus, N.J., and Oceanside, N.Y., the Amazon Fresh grocery stores are offering starting wages between $15 and $18.55 per hour, depending on the store and role type. New employees are offered a variety of benefits packages starting on their first day on the job, as well as opportunities for career growth.

Amazon touts that it promotes from within, noting that since the first Amazon Fresh grocery store opened in 2020, hundreds of employees have been promoted to roles with increased pay and responsibility. In 2021, a majority of store management positions were filled by employees promoted from hourly roles.

“I’m excited to welcome hundreds of new individuals to our Amazon Fresh team as we get the store ready for customers,” said Charlie Chacón, store manager of the Amazon Fresh location in Oceanside. “This is an exciting opportunity to join Amazon and build a career with us.”

There’s also an opportunity to cross-train across the entirety of the grocery store. Grocery associates learn everything from customer service, to stocking shelves, to cashiering, to picking and packing customer orders. Foodservice associates work in the store’s culinary area, preparing fresh food offerings for customers each day.

Amazon Fresh Oceanside is hosting a virtual hiring event on May 26 at 10-11 a.m. and 3-4 p.m. ET. Amazon Fresh Paramus is hosting an in-person hiring event on June 8-9 at the Marriott Saddle Brook in Saddle Brook, N.J. Interested candidates can also visit www.amazonstores.jobs to learn more and apply. Both stores are expected to open in the next few months. 

“I’m proud to bring hundreds of good jobs with benefits to the Paramus community as we prepare to welcome customers,” said Chris Boje, store manager of the Amazon Fresh location in Paramus. “Our new Amazon Fresh store was designed from the ground up to offer the local community ... a seamless grocery shopping experience and low prices on a wide assortment of national brands and high-quality produce, meat and seafood.”

Both new grocery stores will also be enabled with Just Walk Out technology. The technology is made possible by a combination of computer vision, sensor fusion and deep learning, which automatically detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves, and keeps track of them in a virtual cart. When customers are done shopping, they can skip the checkout line. Later, they’ll receive a receipt and a charge to their Amazon accounts. Just Walk Out shopping is available to any customer with an Amazon account, and traditional checkout lanes are also available for all shoppers.

“We’re excited to welcome Amazon Fresh to Paramus, especially during a time when access to high-quality, low-priced groceries is so important,” added State Sen. Joseph A. Lagana (Paramus). “This store will provide shoppers in the area with a new and innovative option for their grocery shopping and will also bring hundreds of jobs to the local community.”

Amazon is in the midst of accelerating grocery format openings across the United States even as it faces unprecedented inflationary pressures affecting its profits and operational costs. In its first-quarter earnings report on April 28, the company said that revenue increased 7% to $116.4 billion in the period ended March 31, compared with $108.5 billion in the first quarter of 2021. Excluding a $1.8 billion unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales increased 9% compared with first quarter of 2021. 

Seattle-based Amazon is No. 2 on Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.