Six years after the launch of Amazon Pantry, Amazon has discontinued the popular service.
Originally known as Prime Pantry, the option initially charged customers in the continental US a flat $ 5.99 in shipping costs for a box that could be filled with up to 45 pounds of non-perishable groceries and household items.
It had started out as an alternative to the traditional grocery store, but started to compete with other Amazon offerings – Jeff Bezos’s company acquired Whole Foods and launched its own Amazon Fresh supermarkets.
Amazon still sells canned goods, pasta, cereal, laundry detergent, and other staples through Prime’s main website.
Scroll down to video
Amazon Pantry launched in 2014, allowing customers to pay a flat $ 5 shipping fee for up to £ 45 worth of household supplies and non-perishable groceries. A message on the Amazon site indicates that the service has been discontinued
After a rollout in the US, the service was made available in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, India and the UK, where items were supplied by British supermarket chain Morrisons.
At the time, many of the items in Pantry were not available on Amazon’s main site because they were individual size, not bulk.
A limited and ever-changing variety of products was available, including, according to Amazon, “soft drinks and bottled water, a new range of paper and laundry products in popular package sizes, loose cartons of cereal, crisps, convenience personal care products and more. ‘
However, it has since become increasingly aggressive about dominating the grocery business, both online and physically.
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 blocked supply chains and limited the number of employees available to store orders
Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017 for a reported $ 13.7 billion, giving it nearly 450 physical locations.
It now offers Whole Foods delivery service for Amazon Prime members in more than 2,000 US cities.
In 2018, Amazon transformed the Pantry program into a $ 5 monthly subscription service that allowed Prime members to get unlimited orders over $ 40.
The fixed amount – increased to $ 8 – would be added to orders under $ 40 or from non-Pantry members.
The ecommerce giant also opened the first Amazon Go supermarket in 2018, allowing customers to buy basics without physically checking out at a checkout.
Since the launch of Amazon Pantry as Prime Pantry in 2014, Amazon has increased its stake in the grocery sector by purchasing Whole Foods, launching Amazon Go cashless convenience stores, and Amazon Fresh supermarkets.
The first Amazon Fresh-branded supermarket opened in Los Angeles in 2019.
Industry insiders say the number of products offered through Pantry has started to shrink in recent years.
Now, on Amazon’s main site, a message indicates that Amazon Pantry has been ‘discontinued’.
A post encouraging shoppers to buy ‘Pantry bestsellers alongside other grocery and household items’ links to the main ‘Groceries and Gourmet Foods’ category.
The coronavirus pandemic caused demand for online grocery services such as Pantry, Amazon Fresh, Fresh Direct and Peapod to surge.
In March, Pantry service was briefly suspended as supply chains slowed and warehouses closed.
‘Due to the high order volumes, Pantry is currently not accepting new orders,’ reports the company.
This means that items listed as ‘Shipped and sold from Pantry’ cannot be added to your cart. We apologize for this 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 online grocery capacity increased by more than 60 percent in the first weeks of the outbreak.
But many shoppers looking to buy groceries from the Seattle-based company found they couldn’t place orders due to a lack of available delivery times.