Six years after launching Amazon Pantry, Amazon has left the popular service.
Originally known as Prime Pantry, the option initially charged customers in the Americas a flat shipping fee of $ 5.99 for a box that could be filled with up to 45 pounds of non-perishable groceries and household items.
It had started as an alternative to the traditional grocery store, but had begun to compete with other Amazon offerings: Jeff Bezos ’proprietary firm took over Whole Foods and launched its own Amazon Fresh grocery stores.
Amazon continues to sell preserves, pasta, cereals, detergents and other commodities through Prime’s main website.
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Amazon Pantry was launched in 2014, allowing customers to pay a fixed shipping fee of $ 5 for up to £ 45 of basic household items and non-perishable groceries. A notice on Amazon’s site indicates that the service has been interrupted
Following a launch in the United States, the service became available in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, India and the United Kingdom, where the British supermarket chain Morrisons supplied items.
At the time, many of Pantry’s items were not available on Amazon’s main site because they were individual in size and not massive.
A limited and ever-changing variety of goods were available, including, according to Amazon, “soft drinks and bottled water, a new range of paper and laundry products in popular packaging sizes, individual boxes of breakfast cereals, chips, comfort— personal size care products and more. ‘
Since then, however, it has become increasingly aggressive in dominating the food industry, both online and in bricks.
In 2018, Amazon transformed the Pantry program into a $ 5 monthly subscription service. In March, Amazon briefly suspended the Pantry service, as the coronavirus pandemic jammed supply chains and limited the number of workers available to stock orders.
Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017 for $ 13.7 billion, giving it about 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 $ 5 monthly subscription service that allowed Prime members an unlimited number of orders over $ 40.
The flat rate (accrued 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, which allowed customers to buy commodities without having to physically check a record.
Since launching Amazon Pantry as Prime Pantry in 2014, Amazon has increased its stake in the grocery industry, buying Whole Foods, launching Amazon Go convenience stores and Amazon Fresh supermarkets without cash.
In 2019, the first Amazon Fresh brand store opened in Los Angeles.
Industry experts say the number of products offered through Pantry has been declining in recent years.
Now, on Amazon’s main site, a notice indicates that Amazon Pantry has been “discontinued”.
A message that encourages customers to “buy Pantry bestsellers alongside other groceries and household products” in the “Food and Gourmet Food” main category.
The coronavirus pandemic caused an increase in demand for online grocery services such as Pantry, Amazon Fresh, Fresh Direct and Peapod.
In March, pantry service was briefly suspended as supply chains slowed and warehouses closed.
“Due to the large volume of orders, Pantry is not accepting new orders at this time,” the company warned.
“This means that items listed as‘ Ships and Sold from Pantry ’cannot be added to the cart. We apologize for these inconvenience and are working with our partners to get these items back in stock as soon as possible. “.
A month later, the company put new customers on a waiting list to prioritize existing members.
Amazon said its ability to order groceries online increased more than 60 percent during the first few weeks of the outbreak.
But many shoppers who wanted to buy groceries from the Seattle-based company found they could not place orders due to lack of available delivery space.