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Amazon hasn’t been able to fully crack the grocery code thus far, but a massy change is perhaps in the offing.
Amazon recently dropped its cheapest private label brand, Amazon Saver, which offers grocery essentials, mostly priced under $5. The tech giant started to roll out the new private label with products like smoked ham and pancake syrup, and claims it will add “more than 100 items” to the Saver aisles in the coming months. Amazon Saver products can be bought both in-store at Amazon Fresh and online.
“Amazon Saver is the most affordable line within all of Amazon’'s offerings, and we strive for that to be the case within industry too,” Molly McWhinnie, an Amazon spokesperson, said in an email to Retail Brew. “In this economy, we know many customers must make their money go further, and that’s why we are laser-focused on offering selection and quality at an incredible value.”
The introduction of Amazon Saver comes at a time when cash-strapped consumers are still looking for deals. However, Amazon’s new private label also hints at its evolving grocery strategy which seems to be focused on mass.
“Whole Foods is on an encouraging path, but to have a larger impact on physical grocery, we must find a mass grocery format that we believe is worth expanding broadly,” wrote Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in a letter to shareholders in 2022. “Amazon Fresh is the brand we’ve been experimenting with for a few years, and we’re working hard to identify and build the right mass grocery format for Amazon scale.”
Last year, Amazon announced a bunch of changes to the way it runs its grocery business, including consolidating its online grocery cart to include items from Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, and its superstore all in one place.
Over the years, Amazon has struggled to make sense of its grocery business. It has been losing market share to rival Walmart, per eMarketer. Its Whole Foods acquisition has proven to be challenging. This year, the company announced small-format Whole Foods stores as part of an expansion plan.
In 2016, the company first launched Amazon Go convenience stores but last year, said it was closing eight of those stores for better “optimization.”
Still, McWhinnie said, ”Amazon is focused on building a grocery experience grounded on offering incredible selection, value, and convenience.”