Amazon Food to shut down: E-tailer giant discontinues another online service

Just like the other major tech concerns, e-tailer giant Amazon has also announced massive workforce reductions to cut costs over the past few weeks. Apart from job cuts, Amazon has also started pulling the plug on some of its other online services to prepare for the economic crisis that is predicted to hit across the globe. Recently, the company decided to shut down its online education service, Amazon Academy which will be discontinued in August 2023. Now, the e-commerce major has shared its plans to terminate another online service, Amazon Food. The company’s food delivery service started its journey in May 2020 in India as a pilot project based available only in Bengaluru and will stop working on December 29. Amazon has reportedly told its restaurant partners in India about its decision to discontinue the service.
How Amazon will end the food delivery service
According to a report by The Economic Times, a spokesperson mentioned that the decision to discontinue Amazon Food was taken during the company’s annual operating planning review process. The company’s spokesperson also claimed that Amazon will discontinue these programs “in a phased manner to take care of current customers and partners”.

Amazon’s message to its partner restaurants
Amazon has sent a mail to its restaurant partners about closing the food delivery business. The mail mentions that the company’s decision to shut down Amazon Food will mean that the restaurants will no longer get orders from customers via Amazon Food after December 29. Amazon also noted that its partners will continue receiving orders until the mentioned date. The company also expects that the restaurants will continue to fulfil the orders until then.
Apart from this, Amazon has also claimed that the company will meet all its payments and other contractual obligations. Restaurants can access Amazon’s tools and reports till January 31, 2023, and support for any compliance-related issues will be addressed till March 31 next year.

Amazon and the Indian market
As per the report, the company will continue to invest in other parts of the Indian market including — smartphones, consumer electronics, grocery, fashion and beauty along with its B2B offerings like Amazon Business.
Amazon India is currently being probed by the Union Labour Ministry for asking several Indian employees to voluntarily resign from the company last week.