Amazon Fresh Deliveries Flop In Germany

Deutsche Post DHL has stopped making Amazon Fresh deliveries in Germany due to low demand.

A spokeswoman confirmed to Reuters that DHL was ending its partnership with Amazon Fresh, but she assured that the rest of its business with the eCommerce giant would not be impacted by the move.

“The market for online ordered fresh food has been far behind expectations to date,” she said. “Due to this reason and the complexity of the whole process, we have significantly reduced our activities in this area.”

An Amazon spokesman declined to comment.

With so many discount supermarkets like Aldi and Lidl located throughout the country, online only made up about 1.2 percent of food sales in Germany last year. Still, Amazon’s spokesman pointed out that Fresh had received positive feedback in Germany. In addition, a source said that Amazon Fresh customers in Germany would not be affected by DHL’s decision, and that Amazon is working on its own delivery service in the country.

Last month new data showed that Amazon second-quarter grocery sales came in at $650 million, up 40 percent year over year. The report also revealed that the eCommerce giant held 18 percent of U.S. online grocery sales since 2017 — and Amazon’s current share of the online grocery space has now doubled that of its closest competitor.

That growth comes with “nearly every category attracting more and more grocery shoppers to Amazon,” according to report author Jacob Porter, director of global marketing for One Click, which released the report.

Beverages comprise most of Amazon’s online grocery sales market, with “cold beverages at $140 million (+36 percent) and coffee at $135 million (+40 percent) in the second quarter.” Coffee accounted for seven of Amazon’s 10 best-selling grocery items.

The other categories that had strong sales growth in the second quarter were snack foods, breakfast foods, baking ingredients, candy and gum, meal essentials, warm beverages (excluding coffee) and baby food.