Amazon.com Inc. employees shop at the Amazon Go store in Seattle, Washington, U.S. (Photographer: Mike Kane/Bloomberg)
(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- In the fall of 2015, Amazon executives in charge of a top-secret project to revolutionize grocery stores invited Jeff Bezos to evaluate their work. They’d leased a warehouse in south Seattle and converted part of the ground floor into a 15,000-square-foot mock supermarket, with plywood walls, shelves, and turnstiles, mimicking technology that would scan shoppers’ smartphones when they walked in.