Amazon Fresh is shutting down in neighborhoods in at least nine states across the U.S., Recode’s Jason Del Rey reports. Customers in parts of New York, California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Massachusetts received emails notifying them that the grocery delivery service will no longer be available.
“We have made changes to our service area and discontinued delivery to select zip codes,” an Amazon spokesperson confirmed to GeekWire. “AmazonFresh continues to serve customers across the U.S.”
Fresh has become a bit of an Albatross for Amazon; the company has tested out different payment structures to make it financially viable. The newest iteration costs customers $15 a month on top of the $100 per year Prime membership. News that Amazon is rolling back Fresh in some regions is notable because the company is ramping up its other grocery businesses.
Amazon completed its $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods at the end of summer and opened two AmazonFresh Pickup stores in Seattle earlier this year. AmazonFresh Pickup is a new experimental drive-up grocery service, while Amazon Fresh is the grocery delivery offering the company has been operating for years.
An Amazon spokeswoman told Recode the Fresh closures were not related to the Whole Foods acquisition.
Amazon reported profits of $256 million in last week’s third-quarter earnings report and $1.3 billion in net sales from Whole Foods for Q3. Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said that Amazon and Whole Foods are now “fully working together,” on the third-quarter earnings call. He noted that Amazon has started to begin the “technical work to make Prime the Whole Foods customer rewards program at some point in the future.”
