Amazon really wants you to shop at an Amazon Fresh store this Prime Day
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- Amazon is offering Prime members up to 25% off Amazon Fresh purchases for Prime Day this year.
- The retail giant is beefing up its grocery deals after nearly three years of running Fresh stores.
- Amazon's grocery business hasn't met its expectations, but CEO Andy Jassy still sees an opportunity.
Amazon's Prime Day this year isn't just about buying kitchen gadgets or the latest consumer tech: The company is also trying to get you to visit one of their Amazon Fresh grocery stores.
In the days leading up to Amazon's Prime Day event on July 11 and 12, the e-commerce giant is offering 20% off purchases of at least $50 at its Amazon Fresh stores to Prime members, it said in a blog post Thursday. The discount increases to 25% on the 11th and the 12th, according to the company.
Amazon is also offering 6% back to Prime members who use its Visa credit card at Amazon Fresh. Normally, cardholders earn 5% back.
The deals are more substantial than what Amazon offered at Amazon Fresh on Prime Day in the past. In 2022, Prime members could get deals on specific products, ranging from bacon to Amazon-branded pita chips. An across-the-board discount wasn't part of the offering last year, though. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
The latest deals also come as Amazon tries to find a path forward for its Fresh grocery stores. Amazon has opened roughly 44 Fresh stores in the US since 2020. But since then, it has closed some stores and put some new openings on hold.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in February that the company has "a very significant opportunity in the grocery segment." But after two and a half years, Amazon still hasn't figured out exactly how the stores should compete in the grocery industry, he said.
"We're not going to expand the physical Fresh doors until we have that equation with differentiation and economic value that we like, but we're optimistic that we're going to find that in 2023," Jassy said.
In general, products at Amazon Fresh are lower-priced than equivalents at Whole Foods, the grocery chain that Amazon paid $13.7 billion to acquire in 2017. Analysts have said that Fresh is better positioned than Whole Foods to compete with middle-market grocers such as Albertsons.
Amazon has been rethinking its strategy for its brick-and-mortar stores for over a year.
Besides rethinking its rollout of Fresh, the company has also closed several Amazon Go convenience stores that use its cashierless checkout technology. It has also closed all locations for some of its retail chains, such as its bookstores, pop ups, and 4-Star locations.