Amazon quietly starts selling private-label perishable food products

[Shawn Knight]

Amazon is now in the business of selling its own perishables, having quietly introduced its first private-label food products over the past few days.

A company spokesperson confirmed with CNET that Happy Belly coffee and Mama Bear baby food is indeed made by Amazon and is offered exclusively to Prime members in the US. Amazon didn’t say if more private-label food products were in the pipeline.

Selecting coffee as one of its debut food products is no coincidence as the e-commerce giant almost certainly is looking to compete with fellow Seattle titan Starbucks.

For those curious, its Happy Belly coffee is described as a fair trade organic product available in breakfast blend, espresso roast, French roast and house blend. It sells for $9.99 for a 12 ounce bag although seeing as I don’t drink coffee, I have no idea if it’s priced competitively.

The Mama Bear baby food is also organic. It’s priced at $12.49 for a dozen four-ounce jars and is currently offered in apple blueberry and apple pear banana flavors.

Sales of store brands like these are big business. According to the Private Label Manufacturers Association, store brands brought in $118.4 billion in the US alone last year. That’s an all-time high and an increase of roughly $2.2 billion year-over-year.

Earlier this year, Amazon quietly launched its own clothing brands which joined a number of other Amazon-branded products including baby wipes and batteries.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/65400-amazon-quietly-starts-selling-private-label-perishable-food.html

 

[dirtyferret]

The baby food is competitive in price (we may try it as I often get the Amazon baby wipes), the coffee is not as I can go to trader joes or whole foods and get their in house brand for $4.99-5.99 for 14oz (Trader Joes medium roast is very good).

 

[treeski]

The baby food is competitive in price (we may try it as I often get the Amazon baby wipes), the coffee is not as I can go to trader joes or whole foods and get their in house brand for $4.99-5.99 for 14oz (Trader Joes medium roast is very good).

Doesn't Trader Joe's coffee only come in full beans? So the same size package gets you less grounds.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Baby food sure did't cost anything like that when I last bought it, about 30 years ago.

 

[dirtyferret]

The baby food is competitive in price (we may try it as I often get the Amazon baby wipes), the coffee is not as I can go to trader joes or whole foods and get their in house brand for $4.99-5.99 for 14oz (Trader Joes medium roast is very good).

Doesn't Trader Joe's coffee only come in full beans? So the same size package gets you less grounds.

comes in both, full beans and ground. It used to be full bean only until a year ago or so. Not sure on whole foods coffee as I tend to purchase whole beans and grind at the store and shop more often at Trader Joes.