A customer scans her phone as she enters Amazon’s new Amazon Fresh store in Ealing, west London, on March 4, 2021. (Photo by Niklas HALLE’N / AFP) (Photo by NIKLAS HALLE’N/AFP via Getty Images)
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It promised to revolutionize the U.K. supermarket sector and introduced technology that meant shoppers could just walk out, but British shoppers instead have voted with their feet over Amazon Fresh.
The online retailer that seemingly can do little wrong just cannot get grocery right and the 19 Amazon Fresh stores around the U.K. are to close or be rebranded the company confirmed in an online statement.
Signaling the end of its high-tech Amazon Fresh stores, the online retailer reamined defiant and is promising to double down on its wider presence in the country’s food retail market after confirming plans to shut 14 of its 19 Amazon Fresh locations and convert the remaining five into branches of Whole Foods Market, the natural and organic grocery chain it owns.
That will bolster its small Whole Foods footplate but once again the upscale grocery offer has failed to land in the U.K. despite various attempts to make it click with British shoppers and a recent major store opening in affluent Chelsea, London.
The Amazon Fresh move marks a retreat from the futuristic checkout-free format that Amazon introduced in Britain just four years ago, when it opened its first Fresh store in Ealing, west London, becoming its first physical retail site outside the U.S.
As with its U.S, stores, the Amazon Fresh outlets were designed to blur the lines between online shopping and traditional food retail, using sophisticated technology to eliminate the need for tills or cashiers. Shoppers could enter the store by scanning the Amazon Go app, pick up items tracked by cameras and sensors, and simply walk out, with purchases automatically charged to their registered payment cards.
Despite the innovation, the stores struggled to gain the traction Amazon had hoped for in a competitive market dominated by established U.K. and European supermarket chains and discounters.
Shoppers Underwhelmed By Amazon Fresh
Perhaps it reflects a more conservative shopper, but British consumers never seemed quite to get over the feeling that they were shoplifting rather than embracing a bold new and seamless payment system and a well-served market of world class grocery retail was always going to be a tough nut to crack.
While closing most of the Fresh sites, Amazon is expanding the Whole Foods Market brand, which caters to demand for organic and premium products. A new Whole Foods opened earlier this year on King’s Road in London’s Chelsea neighborhood, which was the chain’s first new U.K. location in more than a decade.
Another is planned for a London location by 2026. If the proposed conversions go ahead, Whole Foods will grow to a meagre 12 stores across the country.
However, Amazon is not giving up on the U.K. and said that it is reinforcing its online grocery operations, which it says are now growing faster than the rest of its British business.
Through its main U.K. website, Amazon Fresh online, Whole Foods and delivery partnerships with British grocery groups Morrisons, Co-op, Iceland and Gopuff, the company already offers more than two million grocery and household items for rapid delivery.
By early 2026, it expects to more than double the number of Prime members who can access three or more grocery delivery options, aiming to make at least one of its grocery partners available to more than 80% of Prime subscribers.
Amazon also plans to add perishable groceries to millions of other products on Amazon.co.uk for same-day delivery, a service it recently rolled out across more than 1,000 U.S. cities and towns.
Amazon Fresh Sees Essentials Surge
The company also insisted that British demand for everyday essentials has surged, with hundreds of millions of items delivered in 2024 alone, representing nearly 20% year-over-year growth. In the first quarter of 2025, grocery and household goods grew at nearly twice the pace of all other product categories and now account for roughly one in every three units sold on Amazon’s U.K. website.
Amazon U.K. Country Manager John Boumphrey said that the company remained committed to “inventing and investing” to give British customers more choice and convenience, promising that further details of its evolving grocery offering will be shared in the coming year.
For now though, the store arm of Amazon Fresh is gone, having over four years barely made a ripple in the U.K. grocery pond.