Amazon Is Opening a 4-Star Store at Its Seattle HQ

Amazon will open its fourth Amazon 4-star store in the ground level of its newest corporate office tower in Seattle on Thursday. The 4-star store on Westlake Avenue will be its first to open in Seattle.

The concept is a store where everything for sale inside is rated 4 stars and above, is a top seller, or is new and trending on Amazon.com. The idea is to offer shoppers a place of discovery by providing a direct reflection of Amazon customers—what they’re buying and what they’re loving.

The first of its kind opened in New York’s SoHo neighborhood last fall, followed by stores in Denver and Berkeley, CA. The stores feature devices, consumer electronics, kitchen, home, toys, books, and games. Shoppers walking a 4-star store will see features like products that are trending in the area; “Most-Wished-For” sections, a collection of products that are most added to Amazon.com Wish Lists; “Frequently Bought Together”; and “Amazon Exclusives.”

Electronic price tags that update in real time display each item’s star rating as well as the number of reviews it has received, according to Geekwire, and the Seattle store has a team of 20 humans, with seven to 10 people on duty at any given time.

“We do of course use the data that we have available to us, like sales and trending information, stuff that our category curator teams are pulling forward,” Jeanine Takala, spokeswoman for Amazon’s Physical Stores division told GeekWire. “We have our own level of human curators that take a look at all that and decide what we’re going to bring forth.”

The Seattle store does not take cash, though Takala confirmed to multiple publications the company is working on accepting paper money at all its physical stores. 

Amazon started accepting cash when it opened its 12th Amazon Go store, amid criticism that the company is discriminating against low-income shoppers.