Dive Brief:
- Amazon has closed its last remaining Fresh Pickup location in Seattle, Amazon spokesperson Jessica Martin confirmed in an email.
- The SoDo neighborhood site closed in December 2023, almost a year after a location in the city’s Ballard neighborhood closed in January 2023. Both grocery pickup spots opened in 2017 — nearly three years before the launch of the company’s Amazon Fresh grocery chain.
- The closing of these pickup facilities comes as Amazon is making significant changes to upgrade its grocery portfolio.
Dive Insight:
When first launched in 2017, Amazon’s Fresh Pickup concept allowed Prime members to order groceries online, reserve a pickup time at one of the two Seattle locations and then have their goods loaded into their cars at the Fresh Pickup sites.
Amazon’s experiment with the pickup facilities, however, never expanded beyond its two Seattle locations that have closed.
“Like any retailer, we periodically assess our portfolio and make optimization decisions around how we operate. In this case, we decided to close our SoDo Amazon Fresh Pickup location,” Martin said in an emailed statement. She also noted the company is “working closely” to support affected employees.
Despite the end of the Amazon Fresh Pickup locations, Seattle shoppers will still have pickup service options from the company as part of its grocery revamp offerings. The greater Seattle area is home to five Amazon Fresh locations where shoppers can receive their groceries through pickup.
In November, Amazon launched grocery delivery and free pickup to non-Prime members in all markets where its Amazon Fresh stores and online services operate, noting that the offerings would soon expand to Whole Foods Market, as well.
The shuttering of its final pickup-only grocery store comes at a time when Amazon is revamping its grocery business. The company’s next steps in its grocery restructuring mainly surround building out its physical store presence, but the company is also committed to improving its bread and butter service — online delivery.
The company announced during the summer a refreshed store format for its Fresh banner and completed updates to two Chicago-area locations several months after pausing the rollout of its Amazon Fresh stores due to underperformance.
Amazon has also made its online grocery delivery more accessible to shoppers in recent months by lowering Amazon Fresh’s free delivery minimum for Prime shoppers. As of early October, any grocery order over $100 has no delivery fees for Prime members in the U.S. — a change that came almost 10 months after significantly raising the order minimum for fee-free Amazon Fresh delivery to $150 for Prime members.
