I think it was a product from a different era. When Prime Pantry launched, Amazon hadn't acquired Whole Foods, and they didn't have a story for last-mile delivery yet.
So they had to ship your order from a warehouse, and the only way to do that profitably on low-margin grocery items was to batch them up into a large order in a box of uniform dimensions.
The fact that they no longer need to do this speaks to how far Amazon's logistics have come over the last 7 years.
Among the growing list of documentaries I would love to watch, but have yet to find, Amazon's logistlics solutions is one at the top. Would be very cool to get a deep look at how all the various types of orders are handled.
+1 for Wendover. Haven't seen the Amazon video myself yet, but the channel in general has a lot of videos that I think HN users would find interesting.
The shipping companies guard their operations somewhat zealously. A lot of present company could learn a ton by being present as an engineer, but they keep even dedicated warehouse employees in a frustratingly low-information position.
Prime Pantry covered the whole country--including rural America. Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh are only in parts of urban America--and doesn't service rural America at all.
This doesn't make sense to me. They've always had a solution to batching: minimum order size for free shipping. They've always had plenty of low margin items.
When they launched pantry here a couple years ago suddenly stuff I was _already_ buying regularly on Amazon (pasta, tomato paste, olive oil) I was blocked from buying unless I signed up for pantry and filled a box.
So they had to ship your order from a warehouse, and the only way to do that profitably on low-margin grocery items was to batch them up into a large order in a box of uniform dimensions.
The fact that they no longer need to do this speaks to how far Amazon's logistics have come over the last 7 years.