Amazon Restaurants Food Delivery Being Shuttered

eCommerce giant Amazon is gearing to close its Amazon Restaurants food delivery service.

GeekWire, citing Amazon, reported the service will be shut down in the U.S. as of June 24. The service was launched in 2015 and is available in more than twenty cities across the country as well as in London. With it, Prime members can get food delivered through the Amazon Restaurants website or Prime mobile app. The program was shuttered in London in November and now the U.S. portion is shutting down.

“As of June 24th, we will discontinue the Amazon Restaurants business in the U.S.,” an Amazon spokesperson told GeekWire. “Many of the small number of employees affected by this decision have already found new roles at Amazon, and others will be provided personalized support to find a new role within, or outside of, the company.” The reported noted that as of June 14 Daily Dish, a lunch delivery service for workers, will also be closed. GeekWire noted that the move comes a few weeks after Amazon invested in Deliveroo, the U.K. delivery startup that raised $575 million in funding. Amazon led that round.

The move on the part of Amazon comes as competition in the food delivery market is getting fierce as Uber and Grubhub fight it out for delivery dominance. Uber Eats is available in about 500 cities and had revenue of $1.46 billion in 2018. That is up from $587 million in 2017, reported GeekWire. Last week Uber confirmed that it is merging a fully-functional web version of Uber Eats into its ride-hailing app. For Uber, merging Uber Eats with its ride-hailing app will give it an advantage over Lyft or DoorDash, which don’t have both services. It will also enable it to stay in line with Careem, Bolt, and Didi, all of which offer both ride-hailing and food delivery services.  Grubhub had revenue of $324 million for its first quarter, which the report noted is up 39 percent compared to the year-earlier first quarter.