Amazon has notified customers in at least nine states that the Amazon Fresh grocery delivery service will be closing in certain neighborhoods later this month.
According to Recode, Amazon Fresh customers in parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, California, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia have received the notices.
A company spokeswoman confirmed that Fresh is ending service in parts of these states, but stated that the service would still serve certain areas of big cities such as New York City, Boston and Chicago, as well as Philadelphia and Los Angeles, among others. She said the changes were unrelated to the Whole Foods acquisition, but declined to provide more details.
After debuting about a decade ago in the Seattle area, the service only expanded to other cities more than five years ago–proof that it hasn’t been easy to make grocery delivery work as the company experimented with different payment models.
Amazon Fresh customers currently pay $14.95 a month in addition to the $99 Prime membership program, to which they must belong. Customers can choose from a selection of fresh and frozen foods, in addition to some general merchandise, that are delivered on the same day for morning orders, or the next morning on orders placed later in the day.
On a recent conference call with Wall Street analysts, Amazon’s CFO said there would be more cooperation over time between Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh and the Amazon Prime Now one-hour delivery service.
The Amazon spokeswoman said she could not speculate on whether Amazon would re-launch grocery delivery services in the affected areas in the future.
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