American grocery delivery service Instacart has reportedly decided to stop offering delivery services to supermarket chain Whole Foods Market starting February next year.
Instacart partnered with Whole Foods in 2014 to offer delivery services to customers and extended the deal through a five-year agreement in 2016.
Go deeper with GlobalData
According to Reuters, the deal resulted in other major grocery chains such as Kroger, Aldi and Costco to partner with Instacart.
CEO Apoorva Mehta told the news agency that the company is planning to remove 350 of its 1,415 part-time delivery staff currently working at 76 Whole Foods locations.
However, in August last year, Whole Foods supermarket chain was acquired by Amazon for $13.7bn.
Following the deal, pick-up and delivery of Whole Foods groceries was being carried out by Amazon workers.
In February this year, Whole Foods began piloting in-house delivery service at a Cincinnati store.
The supermarket chain used Amazon Flex drivers to deliver the orders to customers and stopped offering customers in Cincinnati the option to choose Instacart to serve orders.
Amazon has piloted a free two-hour delivery service from Whole Foods Market through its Prime Now service. The service is currently offered to Prime customers in Austin, Cincinnati, Dallas and Virginia Beach.
Since its inception in 2012, Instacart has raised $1.9bn to grow its business. The company added around 100 retail partners this year.
In September, the company announced that it will open a new tech hub, Instacart North, in Toronto next year in a move to expand its presence in Canada.
