Report: Amazon Fresh sells twice the weight of Statue of Liberty—in pickles

Amazon Fresh released the first installment of The Cart Report this week, offering some comical insights into what its shoppers are buying over the summer. 

While the tongue-in-cheek report, which covers states where Amazon Fresh delivers, gives some consumer trends from last summer, it also aims to help "settle age-old debates across flavor preferences and shopping habits."

The online retail giant says it sold enough pickles last year to double the weight of the Statue of Liberty, for instance. (Spoiler alert, it’s roughly 425 tons.) That’s also roughly the weight of three blue whales, for anyone who was wondering. 

Amazon also broke down some of its silly statistics by city, noting in one example that while mayonnaise is the chain’s top selling summer condiment—shoppers bought more than 430,000 gallons—across the nation, in Washington, D.C., the No. 1 topping was hot sauce.  

Ketchup and mustard held their own, of course, but the red stuff trounced its rival with 2.5 million cups worth sold, according to Amazon. New Yorker’s love of ketchup was a standout stat for Amazon Fresh last summer, though, with residents of the Empire State buying it at a more than 20-to-1 ratio. 

For New Yorkers who do like mustard, though, they prefer spicy over old-fashioned yellow mustard, along with their neighbors in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the report found. Don’t let residents of Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., hear that, though. They prefer theirs classic-style. 

What kind of backyard BBQ dishes are these condiments destined for, though? Mainly hamburgers, according to Amazon, which sold about 2 million last year—that’s roughly three times the number of hot dogs sold. 

Amazon also reported that it sold enough hummus, salsa, queso and other dips last summer to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, or roughly 658,000 gallons. That’s a drop in the bucket, though, compared to the 4 million gallons of ice cream sold from June to the end of August.  

Cookies and cream was the top-selling flavor across the nation; New Yorkers were once again statistical outliers, though, along with residents of Virginia who scream for Neapolitan.

This first report of its kind from Amazon Fresh comes at a time of uncertainty for the banner, which has made numerous media headlines over the last six months for building out at least a dozen locations across the country that never opened.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in an annual letter to shareholders in April that the brand is a work in progress. “Amazon Fresh is the brand we’ve been experimenting with for a few years, and we’re working hard to identify and build the right mass grocery format for Amazon scale," Jassy wrote in the letter. "Grocery is a big growth opportunity for Amazon.”