Amazon is to close its meal delivery service Amazon Restaurants this month. Heavy competition from Uber Eats and DoorDash had made the service unsaveable, but Amazon has already found a replacement.
Investing in Deliveroo
Amazon Restaurants started four years ago and delivered meals to customers in two dozen American cities and (of a very short while) to some British customers as well, but that brief experiment ended last year. On 24 June its American chapter will also be closed, with analysts pointing to heavy competition, not enough promotion and the lack of strategic partnerships with major fast food chains (like Uber has with McDonald’s and DoorDash with Wendy’s).
However, the demise of a service that never got over the 2 % market share threshold is by no means a sign that Amazon is about to quit the meal delivery market: the e-commerce giant already has invested hundreds of millions in Deliveroo. The imminent end of Amazon’s own meal delivery service now puts that investment in a completely new context…
