Amazon CEO Gets Candid About Grocery Progress, Potential
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy may have been quiet about grocery during his annual missive to shareholders in April, but he’s now opening up about the company’s strategy and performance in that crucial omnichannel. During a recent Q&A session with shareholders, the exec emphasized that the company remains keen on the many facets of the physical and online food retailing business.
“I'm very bullish about grocery. I think some folks don't realize how large a grocery business Amazon has today. If you look at our center of aisle things — so these are things like consumables, canned goods, pharmaceutical items, beauty products, really, everyday essentials — if I just exclude Whole Foods Market and Amazon Fresh, we did over $100 billion in gross sales in our grocery business on these items last year alone,” he pointed out, adding, “So it's a very significant business, and then I think we have a bunch of other areas that will allow us to grow in this area."
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Those other areas under the sharp eye of Jason Buechel, VP of Amazon Worldwide Grocery Stores, include ongoing growth at the respective business of Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods Market, Amazon Go, Amazon Grocery and, of course, the ubiquitous Amazon.com website. Jassy lauded the hard work across those business areas, especially efforts to provide consumers with meal and pantry solutions.
“We know if we want to serve as many customers as we want, we need to have a broader, mass perishables offering,” he said. “We've been working on the second version of our physical Amazon Fresh stores, and those are showing meaningful progress in terms of what the performance looks like versus the first version of those Fresh stores. We've also been experimenting with a number of other concepts that we think have promise. These are things like at Whole Foods Market stores, where we have a store within a store, where we're able to have items that maybe Whole Foods Market doesn't supply, but that a lot of families want to shop when they do their weekly grocery shopping.”
He also shared some ways that the company’s sophisticated logistics and software networks are fueling progress. “Similar type of idea, being able to get some of those items in micro-fulfillment capabilities, on locations at certain Whole Foods Market stores. And then an offering that I would say we have seen some very early success on, that's very promising, which is we have these same day facilities that we fulfill millions of SKUs out of for our retail business, typically same day,” Jassy noted.
The CEO told shareholders that Amazon is adding more perishable items to some same-day facilities. “We've experimented in Phoenix, in Kansas City, in Orlando at this point. And so now, when you're getting those items that you get same day, you can add perishables, like eggs or milk, or bread, or yogurt,” he said. “That experience is really resonating with customers. We're seeing very significant adoption, and I'm optimistic as we roll that out to many more of our same day facilities, that that will lead to more of our customers buying perishables from us.”
Seattle-based Amazon is No. 2 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2025 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America. The company was also named among PG’s Retailers of the Century and appeared on its Most Sustainable Grocers list.
