Ahold Delhaize-owned Fresh Direct, acquired by the company in 2020, has decided to pull out of the Philadelphia and Washington, DC, markets, effective at the end of this week.
The move leaves FreshDirect serving only its core - and original - New York City market, plus parts of Long Island and the Jersey shore.
FreshDirect started doing business in 2002, and expanded to Philadelphia in 2012 and Washington in 2017.
- KC's View:
-
I live in an Ahold Delhaize market, and I would suggest that the company's marketing of FreshDirect to potential customers has been, to say the least, underwhelming.
I'm not sure if it is a matter of commitment or priorities, intention or implementation. But I do not get the sense that FreshDirect has been seen or treated as a business that could be integrated into the whole, nor that it has been seen as additive to the brand's value proposition.
And so, it isn't a huge surprise that FreshDirect's market footprint is being scaled back. The question is, what's the over/under on when FreshDirect as a brand goes away completely, suffering the same fate as Peapod, which was a strong brand name with legacy appeal.
