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Consumer watchdog slams Amazon’s new grocery service

Amazon.de’s new grocery delivery service needs a bit of fine tuning, according to test results released by consumer watchdog Stiftung Warentest on Monday.

Consumer watchdog slams Amazon's new grocery service
Photo: DPA

Problems include selection, missing product information and faulty delivery practices.

The company already offers some 50,000 edibles with the service, which started in early July. Products include beverages, baked goods, fresh meats, deli items, regional specialties, dairy and more.

“The large selection, whereby it is difficult to find individual products, showed itself to be incomplete and extravagant,” according to a Stiftung Warentest statement.

In addition to well-known mineral water brands, for example, customers can also treat themselves rarities to a bottle of Tasmanian rain water for €7.90, but most product descriptions are missing information on shelf life and ingredients, the organisation said.

They also complained that shipping could quickly amount to more than the cost of the actual products. Testers ordered 20 fresh products in three different purchases, which totalled around €20, but shipping costs rand in at €25 – and required 15 separate packages.

“The problem: with fresh products Amazon is only the arbiter, shopping is done through partners who all tally up their own shipping costs,” Stiftung Warentest said.

Ten of the packages arrived within two days, the other four arrived on the third day. The final package, containing organic eggs and butter, was only delivered three days after testers registered a complaint.

“So those who aren’t permanently at home increase the risk that the packages will end up at the neighbours,” the organisation said.

Despite the problems, most of the foodstuffs arrived undamaged an in their desired state. A few exceptions included one wrong product, one broken egg, salad with brown edges, and a melted package of butter.

The top consumer testing agency’s concluded that the new service on Amazon is of “little use,“ though it did say that the company itself has already said it would work to improve the offering.

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FOOD AND DRINK

Danish chef wants to launch gourmet dining to stratosphere

Danish chef Rasmus Munk wants to take high-end cuisine to the edge of space, with plans to serve up a stratospheric dining experience in 2025, his restaurant said Thursday.

Danish chef wants to launch gourmet dining to stratosphere

“The expedition will take place aboard Space Perspective Spaceship Neptune, the world’s first carbon-neutral spaceship,” Alchemist, the Copenhagen restaurant that has earned Munk two Michelin stars, said in a statement.

“They will dine as they watch the sunrise over the Earth’s curvature” at an altitude of 100,000 feet (30,000 metres) above sea level, it said.

For $495,000 per ticket, six tourists will embark on a six-hour journey in a pressurised space capsule that will rise into the stratosphere in a hydrogen-filled “SpaceBalloon”.

The 32-year-old chef and self-confessed space enthusiast will be joining the trip.

READ ALSO: World-famous Copenhagen restaurant to close after 2024

Munk promises “dishes inspired by the role of space exploration during the last 60 years of human history, and the impact it has had on our society — both scientifically and philosophically”.

His menu will be restricted only by his inability to cook food over an open flame.

Many of the ingredients will be prepared on the ship from which the capsule is launched, according to Alchemist, which is ranked fifth among the world’s restaurants in 2023 according to the World’s Best 50 Restaurants guide.

In recent decades, Denmark has emerged as a gastronomical powerhouse on terra firma, with the Copenhagen restaurants Noma and Geranium both having held the title of the world’s best restaurant.

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