Exclusive | FreshDirect on dire path amid financial losses, leadership vacuum: Clock is ticking

FreshDirect is rudderless and bleeding money as its Turkey-based parent company is embroiled in its own battle for survival – putting the future of the pioneering online grocer in jeopardy, The Post has learned.The Bronx-based company, whose colorful trucks have weaved through New York City traffic for more than two decades, has been scrambling to hire a new CEO since November after the previous two bosses resigned within months of each other – leaving a leadership vacuum and creating “a lot of uncertainty for FreshDirect,” according to a source with knowledge of the situation.FreshDirect – which quietly inserted a 50-cent congestion pricing fee on all deliveries to below 60th St.in Manhattan to help offset the cost of recently installed tolls, as The Post exclusively reported – is losing at least several million dollars a month on about $600 million in annual sales, multiple sources said.Today, the “clock is ticking for FreshDirect,” said a former investor in the company.It has an estimated 50,000 customers in Manhattan, according to industry consultant Burt Flickinger, and delivers in the five boroughs and other mostly-affluent parts of the metropolitan area.FreshDirect has recently been reaching out to industry experts to help with the company’s turnaround efforts, according to an executive with knowledge of the situation.FreshDirect was already in dire financial straits when its Dutch owner Ahold Delhaize USA, the parent of Stop & Shop, sold the company to Istanbul-based Getir in 2023.

The fast grocery delivery service, a pandemic darling once valued at $10 billion, had high hopes for the Big Apple icon.Co-Founded by Nazim Salur in 2015, the start-up named former Walmart e-commerce executive Sloan Eddelston as FreshDirect’s CEO  and promoted a rising star – Hatice Evren – to lead Getir’s US operations and oversee FreshDirect a year ago.But things quickly unraveled.Eddleston resigned last May, and Evren followed him out the door a...