Amazon is exiting the brick-and-mortar chapter of its Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go concepts, a decision that also closes the door on a long-discussed Amazon Fresh store planned and partially built in Rancho Mirage, and a fully built-out but never-opened Amazon Fresh store in La Quinta.
In a company announcement dated January 27, 2026, Amazon said it will close all 57 Amazon Fresh and 15 remaining Amazon Go stores as it shifts investment toward online grocery delivery and an accelerated expansion of Whole Foods Market.
For Greater Palm Springs, the news has a distinctly local impact: the Amazon Fresh stores that appeared headed for key Rancho Mirage and La Quinta retail centers will not open, leaving prominent, high-visibility retail spaces still searching for their next identity.
Two local projects that never crossed the finish line
The Rancho Mirage Amazon Fresh site became a point of curiosity and, at times, speculation for residents and nearby businesses after signs of life appeared, then faded. The planned location sits at Rancho Las Palmas Shopping Center, off Bob Hope Drive, just north of Highway 111.
This is not a surprise, as the Amazon Fresh sign came down last summer, a visible marker that the project was no longer moving in earnest toward an opening date.
As of the announcement, it was not immediately clear what the property owner would do with the space. A spokesperson for the City of Rancho Mirage said the city had not received updates from Amazon and deferred next steps to the shopping center owner, which did not respond to a request for comment.
The cancelled Amazon Fresh building in Rancho Mirage is located in the Rancho Las Palmas Shopping Center.
The building formerly slated for an Amazon Fresh store in La Quinta at 78945 Highway 111, which is a fully built-out grocery box along one of La Quinta’s busiest commercial corridors, has been for sale for more than a year and remains available. So, there is less of a surprise from the announcement as it pertains to La Quinta. The 36,876 SF building is marketed and available for $11,677,000.
Why Amazon is pulling the plug on Fresh and Go
Amazon framed the closures as a strategic reallocation, not a retreat from the grocery category. In its announcement, the company said that although it saw “encouraging signals” in its Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, it “hasn’t yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion.”
That sentence and the decision behind it effectively end the runway for stores like the planned Rancho Mirage Amazon Fresh, and it clarifies why the chain’s build-out in Southern California never translated into the kind of national rollout many expected when Amazon first entered the conventional supermarket space.
The new center of gravity: delivery speed and Whole Foods growth
Amazon’s announcement puts two growth engines at the center of its grocery strategy.
First is delivery, especially fast delivery that includes perishables. Amazon said it offers grocery delivery in more than 5,000 U.S. cities and towns and plans to expand same-day delivery of fresh groceries to more communities in 2026.
The company pointed to internal momentum as proof of demand, noting that perishable grocery sales through its same-day service have “grown 40x since January 2025,” and that fresh groceries now account for nine of the top ten most ordered items in areas where perishables are available for same-day delivery.
Second is Whole Foods Market, which Amazon is positioning as its flagship physical grocery brand. Amazon said Whole Foods has seen more than 40 percent sales growth since the 2017 acquisition and has expanded to more than 550 locations.
Amazon added that it plans to invest in opening more than 100 new Whole Foods Market stores over the next few years. It also highlighted a smaller format called Whole Foods Market Daily Shop, stating it will open five additional Daily Shop locations by the end of 2026.
Amazon also said some Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go locations will be converted into Whole Foods Market stores.
Whether the Rancho Mirage site will ever be repurposed as a Whole Foods concept is unknown, but it seems highly unlikely given the nearby Whole Foods Market in Palm Desert.
What this means for Greater Palm Springs
For Rancho Mirage, the immediate story is less about grocery choice, the city already has multiple established options, and more about commercial real estate momentum, tenant mix, and what comes next for a space that had been marketed, at least implicitly, as a future high-profile anchor.
The broader takeaway for the Coachella Valley is that Amazon’s grocery growth narrative is shifting away from new store openings and toward logistics, delivery speed, and the Whole Foods brand. That matters locally because it changes the type of investment Amazon is most likely to make in the region. Instead of a tech-forward supermarket on a marquee corner, the next Amazon-driven grocery gains may show up in less visible ways: expanded same-day delivery coverage, a wider assortment of perishables delivered within hours, and more competition for the weekly basket without a new storefront.
For the Rancho Mirage site itself, the headline is simple: the long-awaited Amazon Fresh is no longer a question of timing. It is a closed chapter, and the market is back to a familiar question for prime retail in Greater Palm Springs: which operator can best fill the box, and what experience will convince local shoppers and seasonal residents to make it part of their routine.
