Amazon launching "Pantry" to compete with Costco/Sams

Alien88 shared a link said Fri, Dec 13th 2013 at 2:02pm ET

Reports are saying Amazon is going to launch "Pantry" for Prime customers in an attempt to compete with Sam's Club and Costco in the Consumer Packed Goods arena. Thoughts, comments?

9 comments, 7 replies
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shawn said Fri, Dec 13th 2013 at 4:15pm ET:

I miss Amazon Fresh. Used it quite a bit in Seattle, want it here in St. Louis.

Maybe "Pantry" fills some of that void, but I'm not real sure how I would use it in addition to Subscribe & Save.

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snapster said Fri, Dec 13th 2013 at 5:49pm ET:

I think this is awesome, can't wait - I talked with an Amazon team about opportunity in case-sized lots back in the day. My trial-balloon was that I wanted to see how many individual boxes of mac-n-cheese we could sell in a single day.

maybe counter-intuitive but once Amazon blazes this trail and makes the case-lot sizing more of a commodity, I'd expect this to really blow open even more competition in this space.

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Necoras said Mon, Dec 16th 2013 at 2:29pm ET:

@snapster, I've used ship and save for a few years to buy a few things in bulk. The most irritating thing about it is when I've subscribed to an item and then had that item stop being offered. That would be even more frustrating if I had a recurring subscription of 20 food items and I have to pick new ones every month because 3 of them aren't carried anymore. It's not much of an issue when I'm grabbing a bulk box of mac and cheese off of the shelf. It's very frustrating when I have to manually modify my subscription because they now only carry packs of 8 rather than 12. Or a particular flavor isn't offered. Etc, etc.

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- Or when the price changes... specifically thinking of water filters for my fridge
  
  JerseyFrank said Thu, May 1st 2014 at 2:12pm ET
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spitfire6006006 said Tue, Dec 17th 2013 at 10:18am ET:

Now if they can figure out a cheap way to sell frozen pizza in bulk, they'll have my interest.

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- I bet they do!
  
  snapster said Tue, Dec 17th 2013 at 10:29am ET
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- maybe in some areas but probably not to small cities and towns
  
  spitfire6006006 said Tue, Dec 17th 2013 at 10:46am ET
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- also now i want them to deliver me pizzas with drones
  
  spitfire6006006 said Tue, Dec 17th 2013 at 10:46am ET
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dave said Tue, Dec 17th 2013 at 12:41pm ET:

Sort of related, at least in an Amazon tips sort of way. You know how Amazon now has all these add-on items, little/cheap things that they will only sell you if you get something else at the same time? Over on reddit, someone figured out a good work-around:

You can buy Add-On items alone by including an unreleased item to your cart.

Then you can cancel the unreleased item order. You can look at the coming soon book list (which has a ton that come out in March right now. I just tried it and it seemed to work. I did feel a little guilty, though, so maybe that's the true cost here (aw). Also, I bet they close this loophole soon.

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shawn said Thu, May 1st 2014 at 12:29pm ET:

Looks like Amazon launched Prime Pantry: http://amazon.com/pantry

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katylava said Thu, May 1st 2014 at 1:16pm ET:

This pantry thing seems a lot more useful than subscribe & save -- I have way too many turkey sausages and never enough cat litter.

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- You just need to find a market that will allow you to trade sausages for cat litter.
  
  JonT said Thu, May 1st 2014 at 1:24pm ET
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taternuggets said Thu, May 1st 2014 at 2:05pm ET:

I'd use this.... looks like a pretty limited selection though.

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JerseyFrank said Thu, May 1st 2014 at 2:25pm ET:
Perhaps an overly egocentric view, but I don't see the market here.

I'm a Prime Member and I have to pay $6 per box + $99 a year?
- My local Sams Club is less than 2 miles away and my wife passes it daily. Also, just $40 a year, no shipping costs
- No cheap private label items
- This seems like more work than shopping, mostly due to poor selection and my lack of price knowledge on many of these goods as compared to my local grocery and warehouse stores
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- bummer. i didn't look that closely, but yeah that sounds like a no-go.
  
  katylava said Thu, May 1st 2014 at 2:44pm ET
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- wait... that $99/yr is for prime right? not pantry? we use prime for other stuff so it could still be worth it.
  
  katylava said Thu, May 1st 2014 at 3:03pm ET
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