Six years after Amazon Pantry was launched, Amazon discontinued the popular service.
Originally known as Prime Pantry, customers in the continental US initially charged a delivery fee of $ 5.99 for a box that could be filled with 45 pounds of non-perishable groceries and household goods.
It started as an alternative to the traditional supermarket, but started competing with other Amazon offerings – the Jeff Bezos owner took over Whole Foods and started his own Amazon Fresh grocery stores.
Amazon still sells canned goods, pasta, cereals, cleaning supplies and other staples through the main Prime website.
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Amazon Pantry was launched in 2014, enabling customers to pay a fixed delivery fee of $ 5 for 45 pounds of household necessities and non-perishable groceries. A notice on the Amazon website indicates that the service has been discontinued
Following a US launch, the service was made available in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, India and the United Kingdom, where items were supplied by the British supermarket chain Morrisons.
At the time, many of the items in Pantry were not available on the main Amazon website because they were individual and not large.
A limited and ever-changing range of goods was available – according to Amazon’s soft drinks and bottled water, a new range of paper and laundry products in popular packaging sizes, single boxes of breakfast cereals, potato chips, convenience products for personal care and more. ‘
Since then, however, it has become increasingly aggressive about dominating the grocery industry, both online and brick-and-mortar.
In 2018, Amazon transformed the Pantry program into a monthly $ 5 subscription service. In March, Amazon briefly suspended the Pantry service as the coronavirus pandemic pinned supply chains and limited the number of available workers to stock orders.
Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017 for a reported $ 13.7 billion, giving nearly 450 physical locations.
It now offers Whole Foods delivery service for Amazon Prime members in more than 2,000 U.S. cities.
In 2018, Amazon transformed the Pantry program into a monthly $ 5 subscription service that allowed Prime members an unlimited number of orders over $ 40.
The fixed fee – up to $ 8 – would be added to orders under $ 40 or from non-pantry members.
The e-commerce giant also opened the first Amazon Go convenience store in 2018, enabling customers to buy the basics without having to physically look at a registry.
Since Amazon Pantry was launched as Prime Pantry in 2014, Amazon has increased its stake in the grocery industry by buying Whole Foods, launching cashless Amazon Go convenience stores and Amazon Fresh supermarkets.
Amazon Fresh’s first supermarket opened in Los Angeles in 2019.
Insiders in the industry say the number of products offered by Pantry has begun to shrink in recent years.
Now, on the main Amazon website, a notice indicates that Amazon Pantry has been ‘discontinued’.
A message encouraging customers to ‘Buy Pantry Top Sellers with Other Groceries and Household Supplies’, links to the main category ‘Groceries and Gourmet Foods’.
The coronavirus pandemic has increased the demand for online grocery services like Pantry, Amazon Fresh, Fresh Direct and Peapod.
In March, the pantry service was briefly suspended as supply chains slowed and warehouses closed.
“Due to the high order volumes, Pantry is not accepting new orders at the moment”, a notice from the company.
‘This means that items listed as’ Ships and sales from pantry’ cannot be added to your cart. We apologize for this inconvenience and work with our partners to get these items back in stock as soon as possible. ‘
A month later, the company puts new customers on a waiting list to prioritize existing members.
Amazon said online ordering capacity increased by more than 60 percent during the first weeks of the outbreak.
But many buyers who want to buy groceries from the company in Seattle found that they could not place any orders because there were no delivery slots.