Buying food from Amazon, land of cut-price plastic tat and discounted electronics, feels akin to buying a wedding dress on Shein or a pet from Temu. You feel there’s something distinctly iffy about the whole thing. You’re not sure you even find the purchase appealing. But somehow the twin demons of convenience and low cost force your hand.
We all have our excuses ready when it comes to Amazon. I was an incredibly sparing user until my daughter started school. Until then, I’d spend days investigating scores of shops when specific party or crafting items were required, but the onslaught of last-minute requirements from school broke me. I began to use it more and inevitably became a Prime subscriber.
But when I was asked to write this piece, I snorted. As if I would buy fresh food from such a place. Then I recalled that I did, actually, buy some bits – coffee and crates of Mutti chopped tomatoes – after they soared in cost in supermarkets (the price gap has since closed).
And so, last week, I found myself ordering a range of Amazon’s own brand food, a line called “by Amazon”, to a friend’s London address. I arranged a two-hour contactless slot and received multiple text updates about its arrival. I opened the door as a friendly delivery man said “good morning” and handed me three large paper bags, reminiscent of US grocery bags, two of which were lined and contained ice packs for chilled produce.
I ordered a range of items I often buy at the supermarket, including berries, cheddar cheese, salmon, broccoli, tomatoes, avocados and parmesan, all of which come in “by Amazon” packaging. Who is it actually “by”, though? There is no sign on the labels as to where the food is from, apart from the country.
My requests for information about provenance are, unsurprisingly, turned down. As all the UK supermarkets have been around for some years, even when they try to obfuscate around sourcing, their existing brand provides me with some reassurance. With Amazon, there’s none of this. It would have been nice to be disabused of some of my poor opinion of the company’s ethics – an opinion based on reports about tax avoidance, abuse of worker’s rights, and generally making things harder for small businesses – but I’m sure they have their reasons for hiding where the food is coming from.
If travelling on public transport this month, you may have looked up to see a packet of glistening salmon fillets beaming down at you, alongside the phrase “Amazown label…Food too, who knew?”. The ads are a new push for by Amazon, sold via Amazon Fresh along with a variety of other supermarket brands, following a June announcement that some postcodes in London can now order same-day grocery deliveries – though I ordered an overnight service.
With the closure of the bricks and mortar stores, Amazon is competing with other on-demand food delivery services. As Deliveroo, UberEats and many other smaller organisations in the same market began to deliver food on-demand, Amazon wants to do the same. Can our streets really cope with more delivery drivers, racing to complete their orders within ever tighter drop-off windows?
When I think of Jeff Bezos, on top of all the unprintable words that I can’t share in this family newspaper, I think of Aesop’s dog in a manger fable, in which the dog climbs into the manger to prevent the other farm animals from getting to the hay, even though it’s not something he can eat. This is how I see Bezos, billionaire owner of Amazon, approaching food retail. He’s never going to understand good food, but he sure as hell wants a piece of the pie.
I don’t believe that Amazon can do the job of a supermarket, but it’s too greedy to watch others profit. Amazon began to sell a wide range of fresh food products via Amazon Fresh in 2016, now available in London, parts of the South East, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. It expanded to physical stores and launched its own grocery brand “by Amazon” in 2021.
Here I share my taste test of by Amazon products.
Salad tomatoes
99p/6-pack
A plastic sheath of six perfectly spherical red tomatoes feels…slightly suspicious? They’re from the Netherlands and to be honest I wouldn’t recommend anyone buy these tomatoes, whatever the retailer. Just looking at them takes me back to what I now think of as a Northern 80s salad: a few shards of iceberg, a boiled egg, a spoonful of damp supermarket coleslaw, a puddle of salad cream and half a plasticky tomato. How do they actually taste? Too firm with none of the give a ripe tomato should offer. Crisp like plastic packaging. Mostly bland but there’s a little tartness there that reminds me that it’s a tomato.
Scottish salmon fillets
£4.52/240g
Eating salmon from Amazon gives me the ick more than any of the other products. That said, these fillets are RSPCA-assured, which means they have been responsibly sourced from a Scottish salmon farm. Around 30 per cent of the fish we eat in the UK is farmed salmon and the volume brings with it considerable welfare issues for the fish as well as environmental problems. I cook it in the oven for the 20 recommended minutes. It comes out with a pleasantly burnished outer, but while it looks like it will flake nicely, it is mushy inside. It tastes of very little and isn’t even especially fishy.
British 10 Mature Cheddar slices
£2.45/250g
I’d put this on a burger but nothing else. I don’t get any of the mature cheddar taste I’d expect, nor any of cheddar’s wonderful crumbly texture. Instead, I’m served a damp, faintly salty slice.
Salad tomatoes, £0.99; British Mature Cheddar slices, £2.45; Scottish salmon fillets, £4.52Extra large ripe and ready avocados
£3.50/2
Hass avocados from South Africa and one of them is, as the label promises, ripe and ready, while the second feels like it will spring into action in a day or so. This is one of those really tricky supply chain conundrums and I never expect an avo labelled as ripe to always deliver, so that’s impressive. It slices perfectly and has smooth flesh, but tastes bland.
Strawberries
£2.70/400g
It seems a bit late for strawberries but I got some from the Spar at the end of my road last week and they were OK so I thought I’d give Amazon’s a try. They are UK-grown at least, small, as is usual at this time of year, and quite juicy with a bit of sweetness. Not bad.
Spanish tortilla
£1.45/250g (reduced from £2.55)
This, mercifully, contains only the ingredients it should: potato, onion, oil and salt. I think tortillas are a good choice for people looking for easy ready-to-eat picnic products or work lunches without the prep. This one is a bit flabby and needs more seasoning.
Broccoli, £0.84; Spanish tortilla, £1.45; British 21-day matured sirloin steak, £5.28British 21-day matured sirloin steak
£5.28/225g
I ordered a sirloin as I recently did a taste-test of supermarket sirloins. It is worse than the salmon. I fried it for a few minutes on each side on a high heat, which as per the packet instructions should give me a rare-medium result, but the result is grey on the outside and very nearly cooked through inside. There’s some flavour to it but it goes powdery in the mouth. At £23.46/kg it is 23p/kg cheaper than the Aldi Ashfields sirloin I tried last week but I would never buy it again and only eat a few bites.
Spanish meat selection
£2.63/105g
I am a big fan of pork products, but not these pork products. The selection includes chorizo and salami which are flabby and porky with a decent kick of heat, along with serrano ham which is thick and hard and leaves a horrible chemical aftertaste. While a comparable price with Sainsbury’s – both are £25/kg – this is quite a bit pricier than the Spanish meat selections from Asda (£21.75/kg) and Aldi (£16.58/kg). All are preserved with nitrites.
Parmigiano Reggiano
£3.92/200g
At £19.60/kg, this is more expensive than Aldi and Lidl Parmigiano Reggiano and nowhere near the quality. I’m looking for a dry, crumbly cheese with decent crystals and a deep salty and savoury flavour but while this has a very strong and salty tang, which is tasty, there’s no character or nuttiness and the texture is terrible – smooth and a bit slimy.
Spanish meat selection, £2.63; Green beans, £0.77; Parmigiano Reggiano, £3.92Broccoli
84p/300g
I don’t order fruit and veg online if I can avoid it as the results are so often disappointing. Last month I received a red cabbage from Sainsbury’s the size of an orange! I am therefore surprised and somewhat mollified that this head of British broccoli is a decent size and at least arrives unsquashed.
Green beans
77p/200g
Nice-looking, large round beans, all in a decent condition.
My verdict
I wouldn’t buy food from Amazon again even if it did taste great and was far cheaper, which it isn’t, because the fact there’s no available information about the supply chain is unacceptable to me.
So was it much cheaper? As an Amazon Prime member, I spent over £30 for a next day, two-hour delivery slot. At Tesco, I calculate the same basket would cost £26.29 with a £3 next-day delivery.
I also found the ordering process frustrating as often I wasn’t notified a product was unavailable in my area until reaching the basket stage. This is similar to Whoosh, presumably a principle competitor, which offers to deliver my Tesco basket in half an hour for £2.99, but juggling what is and isn’t available is close to impossible. All in all a disappointing and icky experience.
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