Amazon.com Inc. may open at least 3,000 AmazonGo cashierless stores in the U.S. over the next few years, which looks like a move to take on the everyday convenience store and fast-food joints.

According to Bloomberg, someone familiar with the matter had divulged that Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos saw a problem with lunchtime queues for the average American. The source said that Bezos had two ideas in mind, one to open a cashierless store much like 7-Eleven and another to make the store more of a place where one can pick up a quick sandwich similar to the “Pret A Manger” sandwich shop in the U.K.

If indeed Amazon is thinking about 3,000 stores, that’s some expansion considering Amazon has only four cashierless stores at the moment. The first one was opened in 2016 in Seattle, followed by another two there and then one in Chicago. According to reports, Amazon intends to open more stores in Chicago and San Francisco in 2019.

If Amazon does intend to take on both convenience stores and casual lunchtime dining outlets, this will happen incrementally and it won’t be until 2021 that we see the 3,000 functioning stores.

The scale Amazon operates at now is breathtaking.

There are 5,300 Walmart stores in the United stages. Amazon wants to get to 50% of that in 3 years. https://t.co/G5BPw6gbOb

— Austen Allred (@AustenAllred) September 19, 2018

The model itself is simple enough. Shoppers pick up goods and sensors track the items leaving the shelf. All the items picked up are listed in the person’s digital shopping cart on their smartphone and then they are billed.

Does it work? It seems so, according to reviews. There’s the matter of accidentally shoplifting goods, but purposefully stealing from a store bedecked with so much technology is probably not a good idea.

That’s also one of the reasons Amazon has been slow to open such stores. It’s said the original Amazon Go store in Seattle cost more than $1 million in hardware alone.

Nonetheless, the company has said it intends to open at least 10 new cashierless stores by the end of 2018 and will add another 50 locations the next year. Bezos has said that he’s interested in opening more physical stores, but Amazon needs a new concept.

“If we offer a me-too product, it’s not going to work,” Bezos said last week at an event in Washington D.C., so one would think cashierless is the way to go.

News of Amazon’s ambitions had an effect on the stock market, with the company’s main rivals all seeing a dip in share prices. When asked about the legion of new stores, a spokesperson for Amazon provided the usual response: “We don’t comment on rumors or speculation.”

Photo: Irv Kagan Photos/Flickr