Amazon Fresh In-Store Promotion $15 off $35 until 3/14/22

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storewanderer
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Re: Amazon Fresh In-Store Promotion $15 off $35 until 3/14/22

Post by storewanderer »

mbz321 wrote: January 31st, 2022, 12:02 pm I saw this in my Amazon account online while browsing for something else, and I've already used this coupon twice at my local 'Fresh' store. I thought it was another localized offer (they mailed out a measly 20% off purchases above $25 coupon a few weeks ago, and a $10 off $50 or something of little value) but I've also seen ads for it on my Facebook feed.

One thing I noticed last night is that my total was only $34.95 and the coupon still came off just fine (I was going to grab like a couple mushrooms from the bulk bin to pad the total as I already had bananas in my cart, but scanned it on the Dash cart before I checked out and saw it come off). Makes me curious to experiment some more next time with this one :P.

And just to add, the two times I've stopped in recently (this location, their only one so far in PA, opened this past August), the store is an absolute ghost town. I was one of maybe 5 other people shopping the entire time I was in there. Prices, that already weren't that great, have again increased on most things. The coupon definitely helped a lot though and made stuff a bit cheaper than elsewhere. Shelves have been a little fuller than they were, but there are still noticeable gaping holes. Product rotation of perishable dairy items still seems to be lacking. I have found they sell an Italian hoagie by the Deli counter that is actually pretty decent for the price (compared to most of the prepared food options which are just outrageous), just don't look at the nutrition facts!

But I don't know how this store is going to survive in its current format unless they are really doing a tremendous 'Pickup' business that I just don't see.
I wonder if they should have re-tooled Whole Foods 365 into this format (basically keep what 365 was doing but add more SKUs for regular branded items to fulfill online orders). It sounded like 365 had a solid but basic and tightly labor-managed fresh program in place.
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Re: Amazon Fresh In-Store Promotion $15 off $35 until 3/14/22

Post by mbz321 »

...And what do you know? After the previous coupon expired, they released another $15 off $35 (really $29 unless they fixed that 'bug' with this new one) on Facebook. Expires the end of the month.
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Re: Amazon Fresh In-Store Promotion $15 off $35 until 3/14/22

Post by Romr123 »

We stopped into the Irvine store yesterday out of curiosity midafternoon. What a confused mess. They were sampling outside and inside the store, but because they only had full-size items, you had to come back after checking out. The samples were for Coca-Cola with Coffee (the cans), mini-bags of house-brand cookies (good tasting), full-size bags of a truffle candy (house brand as well). Inside the store sampling pizza and california rolls (both the pizza oven and sushi station were busy with production).

Scads of employees around filling orders, a few stocking shelves, a few customers using the automatic carts, but no order to the madness. They had French bread 89 cents a loaf in a rack near the entrance, but upon investigating, it was thawed out (from perhaps their WFM central bakery?) .

Endcaps were (as mentioned before) a mess with unrelated items on them. Soup aisle was ridiculous--good selection of Campbells, for instance, but individually faced (i.e. not even tomato/chicken noodle were on case cartons as you see in normal supermarkets, and specialty varieties were similarly individually stacked. They needed one of the Campbell's displayers in the worst way). Progresso had a lot of esoteric varieties, but the one flavor my husband wanted to try was only on the shelf 7' up (backstock) and not on an accessible shelf. Pricing was downright weird (16 ounce private label organic canola oil (cheap Ventura Foods plastic bottle) was $4.29 (i.e. a reasonable price for 48 ounces) but Smart Balance 24 ounce oil was $3.19 in the next facing. Some interesting varieties of private label snack crackers which we did purchase; a couple of interesting baking mixes but otherwise entirely forgettable. A few random gadgety type kitchen wares back in the corner near the Amazon lockers (those seemed strategically located, at least to force people through the store and allow back-loading of the lockers)

We don't use Amazon Prime, but they linked the credit card with my account and emailed the receipt to our Amazon email.

I am wondering if there is a secondary need which these stores fulfill for Amazon in helping with some private label development in support of both WFM and Amazon--TBH the only interesting stuff was the private label stuff (which Loblaw did 25 years ago with President's Choice). Branding was all Amazon brands--Happy Belly, Solimo e.g. (rather than WFM). Honestly can't figure out why they bother with a secondary private label for Amazon--365/WFM would seem to be a better, fully developed private label.
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Re: Amazon Fresh In-Store Promotion $15 off $35 until 3/14/22

Post by storewanderer »

Romr123 wrote: March 20th, 2022, 8:15 am They had French bread 89 cents a loaf in a rack near the entrance, but upon investigating, it was thawed out (from perhaps their WFM central bakery?) .

Endcaps were (as mentioned before) a mess with unrelated items on them. Soup aisle was ridiculous--good selection of Campbells, for instance, but individually faced (i.e. not even tomato/chicken noodle were on case cartons as you see in normal supermarkets, and specialty varieties were similarly individually stacked. They needed one of the Campbell's displayers in the worst way). Progresso had a lot of esoteric varieties, but the one flavor my husband wanted to try was only on the shelf 7' up (backstock) and not on an accessible shelf. Pricing was downright weird (16 ounce private label organic canola oil (cheap Ventura Foods plastic bottle) was $4.29 (i.e. a reasonable price for 48 ounces) but Smart Balance 24 ounce oil was $3.19 in the next facing. Some interesting varieties of private label snack crackers which we did purchase; a couple of interesting baking mixes but otherwise entirely forgettable. A few random gadgety type kitchen wares back in the corner near the Amazon lockers (those seemed strategically located, at least to force people through the store and allow back-loading of the lockers)
Sounds a lot like the Target grocery experience. Screwed up facings, screwed up pricing, and defrosted "bakery" items.

At least they have $15 off $35.
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