Amazon Fresh is calling it quits in Plainview, before celebrating its one-year anniversary.

The grocery store will close Sunday, according to a sign posted on the window Friday.

The Plainview store is among three Amazon Fresh locations in New York State, all of which are on Long Island.

“Certain store locations work better than others, and after an assessment of our offering, we’ve decided to close our Amazon Fresh store in Plainview,” Amazon spokesman Griffin Buch said in a statement Friday evening.

He declined to disclose how many employees work at the store, but said workers will have the opportunity to transfer to other locations.

Crowds were so thick in the store Friday evening, possibly drawn to the sales of up to 70% off, that security guards were posted in front of the store, which closed early, at 6 p.m. Guards were turning people away as they walked toward the front door.

The Seattle-based e-commerce giant’s Amazon Fresh stores allow shoppers to pay digitally without going through traditional checkout lanes.

The Plainview store, at 50 Manetto Hill Rd. in Manetto Hill Plaza, opened Oct. 24, the same day that the Amazon Fresh opened in East Setauket, at 4054 Nesconset Hwy. in Suffolk Plaza.

The 33,342-square-foot Amazon Fresh in Plainview is in the majority of the space that a Fairway Market store exited in 2020.

The first Amazon Fresh store in the state opened in Oceanside in 2022.

The East Setauket and Plainview stores were renovated to open as Amazon Fresh stores at least a year and a half before they opened, with the chain’s signature gray and light green paint and clusters of large windows on the storefronts.

But the store openings were among those in several states that Amazon put on hold in February 2023 after not being satisfied with the concept’s performance.

At that point, there were 44 Amazon Fresh stores in eight states and Washington, D.C.

Amazon revamped the concept by expanding the grocery selection and lowering prices.

Amazon also changed the technology customers use to shop.

Amazon Fresh shoppers use Dash Carts, which are “smart” shopping carts with screens that show running cost totals. Customers scan bar codes of products using cameras on the carts, and then exit the stores through Dash Cart lanes that charge them using the payment method linked to their accounts.

The stores also have traditional and self-checkout lanes.

The first Amazon Fresh opened in Woodland Hills, California, in 2020. There are now 61 Amazon Fresh stores in eight states, including California, Illinois, Maryland and Virginia.

Other Amazon Fresh stores that have closed this year include a store in Manassas, Virginia, that closed in March; Thousand Oaks, California, in April; and a Seattle-area store in Federal Way, in June.

In the United Kingdom, Amazon will close 14 Amazon Fresh stores and convert the remaining five to Whole Foods Market stores, with the intent to focus more on online grocery sales, the retailer announced Tuesday. 

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.