Amazon Doesn’t Need Your Fresh Food Department To Take Money Out Of Your Supermarket

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Amazon Doesn’t Need Your Fresh Food Department To Take Money Out Of Your Supermarket

The Most Exposed Part Of The Basket Is The Part That Looks Exactly The Same On A Screen As It Does On Your Shelf.

A customer may still trust your butcher, choose bananas by hand and buy hot food on the way home. That does not mean you kept the whole grocery basket.

The washing powder may already be coming from Amazon. So may the nappies, coffee, pet food, cereal, toiletries, canned food and toilet paper.

Amazon's South African grocery move began with non-perishable groceries and everyday essentials rather than a complete fresh-food supermarket offer.

That looks like a limitation. Commercially, it identifies the categories Amazon can attack first.

Fresh food involves judgement: colour, ripeness, cut, smell, temperature and trust. A branded pack of detergent or coffee does not. The shopper can compare the SKU, pack size, price, rating and delivery promise on a screen.

That makes repeat-purchase centre-store FMCG especially exposed.

Amazon's Fulfilment by Amazon model also matters. Sellers can place stock into Amazon fulfilment centres and outsource storage, picking, packing, shipping, customer service and returns.

For FMCG suppliers and authorised distributors, that creates another route into the household without every sale passing through a supermarket shelf.

The supermarket can therefore keep the fresh-food visit while losing part of the profitable packaged-goods basket.

A R1,200 visit becomes R950. Footfall still looks respectable. Fresh sales continue. Yet detergent, pet food, toiletries, coffee and pantry stock begin losing units.

That is why Amazon's lack of a full fresh-food range should not be treated as protection.

A supermarket can keep the customer relationship and still lose part of the customer's wallet.

🧠 Need a specific solution?

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Disclaimer: Personal views are based on public info and my SA retail experience. Independent commentary, not representing any BRAND, its management, franchisees, suppliers or employees.

#Shoprite #Checkers #BoxerSuperstores #PicknPay #SPAR #Woolworths #FMCG #FastMovingConsumerGoods #RetailIndustry #AfricanBusiness #darkstore #Clicks #Dischem #Medirite #AI #Robotics

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