Amazon’s Big-Box Test Near Chicago and What It Signals About Walmart’s Next Moves

Amazon is planning a large-format retail store in Orland Park, Illinois, a southwest suburb of Chicago located along a highly competitive retail corridor. According to public planning documents and reporting from multiple business outlets, the proposed store would measure roughly 225,000 to 229,000 square feet and sell groceries alongside general merchandise. If built, it would be Amazon’s first physical retail concept that closely resembles the Supercenter format Walmart has operated for decades.

The announcement has generated predictable headlines framing the move as Amazon taking direct aim at Walmart’s core business. The reality is more nuanced. Amazon is running a bold physical retail experiment, but one that remains localized, unproven, and far from guaranteed to scale. Walmart, meanwhile, is not encountering this challenge from a position of vulnerability.

What Amazon Is Actually Proposing

The Orland Park site sits at the intersection of 159th Street and LaGrange Road on a long-vacant parcel of land. Plans call for a single-story retail building exceeding 225,000 square feet, supported by a large parking footprint and infrastructure designed to accommodate both traditional shoppers and pickup orders. The village’s Plan Commission has approved the project, with additional municipal approvals still required before construction can proceed.

Amazon has shared limited details publicly. A company spokesperson described the store as a “new concept” intended to offer low prices and a broad assortment across fresh groceries, household essentials, and general merchandise. The company emphasized that it routinely tests new shopping experiences and did not signal whether additional locations would follow.

That language is deliberate. Amazon has a long history of experimentation in physical retail, and not all of those experiments have endured.

Why This Experiment Is Different From Past Attempts

Amazon’s prior brick-and-mortar efforts have largely focused on specialty or small-format concepts. Over the past decade, the company launched bookstores, pop-up shops, apparel stores, and its now-defunct 4-Star format, before exiting those concepts altogether. Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh have expanded selectively, often with long pauses between waves of openings. Whole Foods Market remains Amazon’s most durable physical retail asset, but even there the company continues to adjust pricing, merchandising, and store formats.

The Orland Park proposal stands apart because of its scale and intent. This is not a convenience-driven concept or a niche retail experiment. It is designed to support large baskets and frequent trips, anchored by grocery and everyday essentials. That is the same behavioral foundation that made the Supercenter model so powerful.

Grocery is not simply another category. It drives shopping frequency, shapes price perception, and anchors loyalty. Amazon has been explicit in recent years about its desire to grow its grocery and essentials business. The company has reported more than $100 billion in grocery-related sales and has expanded same-day delivery of perishable items across thousands of U.S. markets.

A physical store of this size can support that ambition by improving customer trust in fresh food, reducing last-mile delivery costs in dense areas, and serving as a local fulfillment node for pickup and delivery. It can also signal seriousness to shoppers who still associate grocery quality with physical presence.

Ambition, however, does not guarantee repeatability.

Why Walmart Is Not Starting on Defense

Much of the early commentary around Amazon’s proposal overlooks Walmart’s current position.

Walmart is the largest grocery retailer in the United States by a wide margin, generating more than $275 billion annually in food and beverage sales. Grocery is not an adjacency for Walmart. It is the foundation of its business model and the primary driver of store traffic.

Equally important is Walmart’s physical footprint. Roughly 90 percent of Americans live within ten miles of a Walmart store. That network has quietly become one of the most powerful omnichannel fulfillment systems in retail. Walmart stores function not only as shopping destinations but also as pickup points, delivery hubs, return centers, and customer service nodes.

Amazon is proposing to build one very large store in a suburban market. Walmart already operates thousands of stores performing these functions every day.

That difference in starting position matters.

Walmart’s Historical Response Pattern

Walmart’s competitive response to Amazon over the past decade has followed a consistent pattern. When Amazon introduces a new capability, Walmart rarely rushes to copy the format. Instead, it reinforces the underlying advantage that capability threatens.

When Amazon accelerated fast shipping, Walmart invested heavily in curbside pickup and store-fulfilled delivery. When Amazon expanded its marketplace, Walmart improved seller tools while maintaining tighter control over assortment and pricing. When Amazon leaned into private labels, Walmart refined its own value-oriented brands tied directly to price trust.

The result is that Walmart has not tried to become Amazon. It has focused on making its existing model more resilient and harder to displace.

There is little reason to believe the Orland Park store will change that approach.

Where Walmart Is Most Likely to Respond

If Amazon’s large-format test proves successful and begins to scale, Walmart’s response is likely to be measured rather than dramatic.

First, Walmart would be expected to reinforce price trust in essential baskets. Amazon has emphasized low prices as part of the new concept. Walmart’s typical response in such cases is selective, not sweeping. It protects price leadership on key value items that shape how shoppers perceive the entire basket.

Second, Walmart is likely to double down on convenience execution. Amazon’s store design includes pickup functionality, reinforcing the convergence of physical retail and fulfillment. Walmart already operates this model at scale. The competitive advantage lies in reliability, accuracy, and speed, not novelty. Continued investment in pickup consistency and delivery performance is a natural response.

Third, Walmart will continue leveraging its stores as infrastructure. One of Walmart’s least replicable advantages is that its stores serve multiple roles simultaneously. They are retail locations, fulfillment hubs, and service centers embedded in local communities. Amazon can build a Supercenter-sized box. Walmart already has thousands of them.

Fourth, grocery excellence will remain the anchor. If Amazon’s experiment is built around grocery, Walmart’s response will focus on protecting the weekly trip through fresh quality, in-stock reliability, compelling private brands, and clear merchandising that reinforces one-trip convenience.

Finally, Walmart is likely to continue expanding its data and retail media capabilities. Advertising and marketplace growth have become meaningful contributors to Walmart’s business. These tools deepen supplier engagement and help defend share of wallet across both digital and physical journeys.

What Amazon Still Has to Prove

Even if the Orland Park project advances to construction, several questions remain unanswered.

Can Amazon operate a grocery-anchored big box with consistent execution day after day? Fresh food retail leaves little margin for error.

Can Amazon make the store experience compelling enough to drive habitual weekly trips rather than occasional visits?

Can the economics of large-format physical retail scale without diluting returns, given the capital, labor, and operational complexity involved?

Until those questions are answered, this remains an experiment, not a transformation.

The Bigger Takeaway

Amazon’s proposed Orland Park store is significant not because it threatens Walmart’s dominance today, but because it reinforces a broader truth about retail. Even the most digitally sophisticated retailer sees value in physical presence for essential categories.

That reality validates, rather than undermines, Walmart’s long-term strategy. The Supercenter model is not obsolete. It is difficult to replicate.

If Amazon proves it can replicate it at scale, Walmart will respond. If it cannot, Walmart will continue doing what it already does well: delivering value, availability, and convenience through a network no other retailer can match.

For now, the most accurate interpretation is also the most disciplined one. Amazon is running a serious test. Walmart is well positioned to absorb it, study it, and respond without panic.

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