After a three-year run, local food delivery service Pinemelon is throwing in the apron. The Denver-based company was launched by founder and CEO Alex Lee in 2022 after the pandemic made grocery home delivery a booming business. His goal? To differentiate the business from other services by providing a range of local and organic products in addition to brand-name staples. Eliminating a brick-and-mortar location, reducing packaging and display costs, and working directly with Colorado makers and growers gave customers a wide range of options at reasonable prices—without having to drive all over town to find them.

“In 2022, the overall sentiment was still leaning toward online, but now the majority of people have switched back to brick-and-mortar,” Lee says. As a result, Pinemelon is winding down operations and will deliver its final orders on Sunday, May 11. The company suggests placing orders by May 10 for any last-minute deliveries and notes that some fulfillment options may not be available to specific neighborhoods.

At its peak, Pinemelon had a fleet of 15 delivery vans and was working with more than 400 Colorado producers—Hinman Pie, River Bear American Meats, Il Porcellino Salumi, and Little House of Tempeh, to name a few—to provide variety to customers. The technology for the platform was developed by Lee’s first company, Arbuz, which operates in Almaty, Kazakhstan. While customer satisfaction scores have remained high, the demand has dropped.

“This is a very niche market,” Lee says. “The primary obstacle was finding the right balance. The grocery business, in general, is known for thin margins; you have to get to a certain scale to break even. It’s been a struggle to find a decent margin for ourselves while making it affordable for our customers.”

A grocery delivery driver hands a paper bag and reusable bag with Pinemelon logos to the camera, with his van and a suburban street in the background.
Pinemelon will make its last deliveries on May 11. Photo courtesy of Pinemelon

Lee adds that Pinemelon tried to pivot at the end of 2024 to create a more sustainable model for the business. “We stopped pushing for higher growth, we pulled back on marketing, and we tried to develop more sustainable delivery to fewer neighborhoods,” he says. “Now we’re trying to gracefully wind down the business.”

Lee and Pinemelon’s chief marketing officer, Christopher Ford, notes that they don’t have current plans to reformulate the business. “We still believe in a future with a different type of food system for connecting producers directly with consumers,” he says. “Pinemelon isn’t that solution right now, but we are proud of what we were able to do. Our team is passionate about local food and producers, and we have farmers and makers showing up at the door every day. We know the first names of those makers and we don’t take the relationships lightly.”

With that in mind, Pinemelon will be using its platform to help promote the businesses whose products it has carried, even after its own operations cease. The website will include information and links that customers can use to source their favorite products. There will also be an open list of every farmer, rancher, and small batch producer Pinemelon has worked with, Ford says.

From the Archive: Pinemelon Wants to be Denver’s Go-To Online Grocer for Local, Organic Goods